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JOHfRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



A GUIDEBOOK TO THE 
BIBLICAL LITERATURE 



BY 



JOHN FRANKLIN GENUNG 

PROlESSOR OF LITERARY AND BIBLICAL INTERPRETATIOI* 
AMHERST COLLEGE 



GINN AND COMPANY 

BOSTON ■ NEW YORK • CHICAGO • LONDON 
ATLANTA • DALLAS • COLUMBUS • SAN FRANCISCO 



5" 






COPYRIGHT, 1916, 1919, BY 
JOHN F. GENUNG 



ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 
319.7 



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Cfte iStbenagum ^re«tg 

GINN AND COMPANY • PRO- 
PRIETORS • BOSTON • U.S.Ao 



©CI.A580714 



-av 



TO 

GEORGE FREDERICK GENUNG 

TWIN BROTHER 

IN RECOGNITION OF A LIFETIME SHARED WITH HIM 

IN THE FULL WEALTH OF THAT INTIMATE RELATION 

BOTH OF NATURE AND OF THE SPIRIT 



PREFACE 

THIS book is meant to be just what its title names it : 
a guidebook to the BibHcal hterature, not a substitute 
for it. Its office is subsid iary, not principal. One does not 
study a guidebook for its own sake. The familiar little red- 
covered volumes that deck the traveled man's shelf bear 
witness not to erudition in that species of literature but 
to intimate memories and experiences wherein the useful 
manual that pointed out the scene of them is forgotten. 
So may it fare with the guidebook herewith introduced, to 
the reader. The desired stimulus of it, if indeed it can lay 
any claim to such effect, is meant to be toward the straight 
study of the Bible itself, as one would study a virgin object 
of science, without deflection, without denial, without sur- 
rogate. Its postulate is that the Bible, reverently and con- 
structively interrogated, is its own best interpreter. It bears 
the same relation, accordingly, to the wealth and width 
of the literature to which it would direct its readers that 
Murray and Baedeker bear to the lands and cities and 
treasures of their research ; and its best hopes will be met 
if it succeeds, in some deserving measure, in placing them 
at the fair and free point of view whence, surveying with 
open eye the rich realm of the Biblical literature, they may 
see and know it as it essentially is. 

In essaying, on the scale and scope here contemplated, 
to be a guide through so vast a tract of literary wealth, the 
author's most exacting problem has risen not from the diffi- 
culty or abstruseness of the subject but from its largeness, 
its sheer emb arras de riches ses. Here in a single volume 
is a book covering the life of many centuries which, as 

[v] 



i^ 



GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

Pascal phrases it, was not made by an individual author 
and dispensed among the people but which itself, as it 
emerged and grew, made the people ; that is to say, which 
purveyed for a nation peculiarly gifted and responsive the 
spiritual light and truth that it needed for the right uses 
of life in its successive homes and ages and conditions. 
Immense treasures of matter and manner must needs be 
noted and weighed, whether reduced to the scale of this 
guidebook or not ; there is also to be adjusted the ever- 
besetting tendency, figured in the old proverb, to miss the 
forest for the trees. No end of values are there for the 
gathering, each abundantly rewarding after its kind. He 
that seeketh findeth, and in so rich profusion that each 
department of research, once explored and organized, is 
prone to claim the monopoly and ignore or contemn the 
others. Hence the grim controversies that for centuries 
have so wrought to cleave the Bible truth into parcels and 
parties, — vehement screeds of doctor and saint, with their 

" great argument 
About it and about," — 

controversies warrantable enough, perhaps, to myopic human 
nature, but generally reducible, for all their solemn sincerity, 
to some phase of smallness or one-sidedness. Yet, even so, 
they are not to be scorned ; there are shreds of truth at the 
bottom of them ; but neither are they to be emulated. The 
truth that is in them may be found, I am sure, in some 
more tolerant way, some way more consistent with comity 
of spirit and aim. But to find it one must ascend ; must 
reach some point above, where the tangled lines meet and 
unite. The Biblica l literaturej^afterall^ does make for plain- 
ness, simplicity^ y^jlv \ it recjuires only that one shall find 
the master-key and consistently use it. This is why, as inti- 
mated above, I desiderate a fair and free point of view : 
"^^ fair, I mean, to all sides, all moods, all constituent factors, 

[vi] 



PREFACE 

free from subjective willfulness or torsion. I do not coufit 
myself to have attained. It would not be safe, I imagine, 
for anyone to do so. The quest is too "high, too far-reaching. 
I can only avow the ideal, and keep it bright, and follow 
after. There comes to me often a remark of Matthew 
Arnold's, made for a similar though less exacting case of 
literary judgment. '' To handle these matters properly," he 
says, '' there is needed a poise so perfect that the least 
overweight in any direction tends to destroy the balance. 
Temper destroys it, a crotchet destroys it, even erudition 
may destroy it. To press to the sense of the thing itself 
with which one is dealing, not to go off on some collateral 
issue about the thing, is the hardest matter in the world." 
This may be rather extremely stated ; but the scholar may 
well lay it up in mind as a self-regulative. 

What my desired point of view specifically is, may per- 
haps be better felt, as giving tone and color to^my whole 
treatment, than defined in categoric terms ; for to call it 
literary is at once too broad and too narrow to be truly 
definitive. It is, to begin with, a station in thought and 
feeling where the disposition is less to criticize than to 
describe, less to analyze than to enjoy, less to sit in judg- 
ment than simply to inquire and learn. In other words, my 
attitude, if I know myself, is purely and humbly construc- 
tive. A book of this size and scale, I assume, cannot afford 
to waste time in exploring ctds-de-sac or in recounting things 
that are not so. It is enough to have found these out ; to 
make an academic demonstration of the discovery is another 
matter. Accordingly, I have been content to take the Scrip- 
ture text as it is, in its latest and presumably most definitive 
edition, with more regard to the time it fits than to the time 
in which it was conjecturally written ; content also to assume 
that the Biblical literature was the product not of vague ten- 
dencies and movements merely but of real personal authors 
who, whether one is able to call their names or not, were 

[vii] 



GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

what Professor Godet assumes of the Gospel writers, ''men 
of good sense and good faith." This brings me to the most 
cherished center of my point of view. It has been my en- 
deavor to place myself by the side of each Scripture author, 
as if his literary task were also mine ; to learn his mind, 
share in his conception and aim, feel the intimate throb of 
his personal temperament and style. This for one factor 
of realization ; there is also its inseparable complement to 
reckon with. An author implies an audience. We must 
needs appreciate their point of view, as well as that of their 
poets and teachers. Our quest accordingly must enlarge 
itself to take in the mind of a people or of an era which 
could respond intelligently, whether in sympathy or reaction, 
to the kind of literature under consideration ; for a book is 
not a cloistered thing, it reflects, it is intimately involved 
with, its age. This is where the expository and the his- 
torical come into collaboration. In other words, with the 
study of the literature itself must be combined a study of 
the people whom the literature fits ; and so our research 
must correspond in some degree to what the Germans call 
Culttirgeschickte, a history of a people's culture, as this is 
reflected in the literary productions that have survived 
from the successive periods of its historical experience. 
To the exactions of the point of view must be added the 
claims of balance, perspective, proportion ; else there is the 
besetting liability, as phrased above, to leave the core of 
the thing itself for" ''some collateral issue about the thing." 
And, first of all, it is worth while to note, in the present 
stage of Biblical research, that it makes a good deal of 
difference whether one studies the literature for the sake 
of the history or the history for the sake of the literature. 
Both objects, of course, are legitimate and laudable ; they 
connote, however, quite divergent interests and results, 
which ought to be fairly discriminated. I have pursued the 
latter because my taste leads me to lay the stress rather 

[viii] 



PREFACE 

on present spiritual values — which is to say the values that 
have made the literature Biblical — than on values which 
appeal predominantly to antiquarian interests. But the same 
emphasis which makes history the second interest and not 
the first also, when rightly distributed, puts into proper sub- 
ordination, the multitude of facts and guesses which are so 
apt to clamor for more than their due. Many a true thing 
may be insignificant, or only remotely relevant if at all. 
Especially on the size and scale of this book, such things 
may merit only casual mention, or indeed sink beneath the 
surface into silence. Accordingly, I have given compara- 
tively little relative stress to some things that have bulked 
large in the higher criticism, things like documentary theo- 
ries, editorial additions or glosses, conjectural sources, and 
the like ; while I have almost entirely ignored the clatter 
and clutter of corrupt readings, scribal blunders, dislocations, 
discrepancies, and in general the pettinesses of destructive 
or sceptical criticism, — things which do not belong to the 
scale and scope of this book, and which, when projected 
on the background of the large Biblical theme, can elicit 
only the doubtful query, " Well, what of it .? " When the 
final claims of Biblical values are made up, many things 
that are first shall be last ; it will do no harm to weigh 
and discount that possibility, or in other words to sense the 
proportions and relations of things. 

All this, however, brings us only as far as the outworks 
of our real quest ; the heart of the matter begins here, and 
no teacher or guidebook can impart it. It is a fallacy to 
assume, whatever we think of inspiration, that "we are dealing 
with a literature like every other ; we miss a cardinal factor 
if we do, and our study is sterilized thereby. This is a liter- 
ature unique. It holds perpetual commerce with the unseen 
and the divine, while also its feet are firmly on the earth 
moving among men's intimate affairs. It is Biblical. It is 
a thing to be learned, as it were, by heart rather than by 

[ix] 



GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

rote. And the heart has its own means of recognition. 
Contemplating the majestic evolution and coordination of 
the Biblical theme until in one unitary body of literature it 
has recorded a universe of experiences and relations wherein 
the divine and the human natures meet and blend, the 
sincere heart is aware of what Virgil felt in the universe 
of nature : — 

" Spiritus intus alit, totamque infusa per artus 
Mens agitat molem et magno se corpore miscet ; — " 

or to use Burke's noble' paraphrase : *'the spirit . . . which, 
infused through the mighty mass, pervades, feeds, unites, in- 
vigorates, vivifies every part, . . . even down to the minutest 
member." That is our true, our only adequate objective — 
the spirit within. I do not insist on a theological or mysti- 
cal name for it; that is for the reader's experience to verify. 
One gets the spirit of a book not by logic or memory but 
by a kindred response to its inherent appeal. So with this 
Biblical literature. The Open Sesame is not merely the 
academic or dogmatic or even pietistic spirit, but the strong 
pervasive spirit of the Book itself. With this as the inner 
key the Book is its own best interpreter ; and the reflex 
of that spirit, in fitting proportion and degree, is the best 
illuminant of the collateral and ancillary issues that are 
involved with it. 

The version of the Bible used as the source of quotation 
and reference throughout this guidebook, except in some 
specified cases, is the American Standard Revision of 1901. 

JOHN FRANKLIN GENUNG 

Amherst, Massachusetts 



[x] 



CONTENTS 

PAGIS 

A Preliminary Survey 3-24 

I. The Bible as a Literature 4 

II. The Bible as a Library 12 

III. The Bible as a Book . 21 

BOOK I. THE FORMATIVE CENTURIES 

Chapter I. Semina Litterarum 29-76 

I. The Hebrew Mind 29 

I. The Genius of a Race 31 

II. The Dominant Aptitude 37 

II. The Hebrew Heritage 39 

I. The Allotted Land 42 

11. The Inherited Fund of Ideas 46 

III. Before the Age of Books 56 

I. Literary Fragments and Remainders ' . 58 

II. The Native Mold of Literary Form 64 

III. Avails and' Deficits of the Pre-Literary Times . . .72 

Chapter II. Awaking of the Literary Sense . . . 77-96 
I. The Quickened National Self-Consciousness ... 78 

. II. Initiative in Two Gifted Kings 80 

I. David's Part in the Literary Awakening . . . . 81 
II. Solomon's Relation to Literature 83 

III. Evolution of Literary Types and Functions . . . 86 

I. The Lyric Strain, General and Sacred 87 

II. The Wisdom Strain, and the Sages 92 



GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

PAGES 

Chapter III. Looking Before and After .... 97-132 

I. One People in Two Kingdoms 98 

I. Traits and Tendencies in the Two 99 

n. Resultailt Literary Situation . . . . . . . . 102 

II. Looking Before — Beginnings of Historical Writing 

I. Order of Historical Composition 

II. Two Main Lines of Source Story ...... 



III. How these were Supplemented . . . ... 

IV. Treatment of Myth and Legend 

III. Looking After — Beginnings of Literary Prophecy 

I. Oracles Tribal and Racial 

II. Evolution of the Prophetic Order 

III. Era of Prophetic Masters and Guilds 



Chapter IV. The Stress of Prophecy .... 133- 

I. The Impending Crisis < 

I. Tne Broad Historical Situation 

II. Rising to the Occasion 

III. The Forecast in Joel 

II. In the Northern Kingdom 

I. Arrios, and his Prophecy of Judgment 

II. Hosea, and his Sense of Outraged Love .... 

III. In the Southern Kingdom 

I. A Postponement of Doom 

X II. Micah, Prophet of the Countryside 

III. Isaiah of Jerusalem ... 

IV. The Crisis Met and Weathered . • 



04 
04 
09 

13 
14 

19 

20 

23 
29 

85 
34 
35 
38 
43 

47 
48 

52 

57 
57 
60 

67 
79 



Chapter V. After the Reprieve . . . . . . 186-247 

I. Men of Insight at" Work 188 

I. Isaiah's Vision of Destiny 189 

II. Stimulus of a Royal Patron ......... 194 

III. Treasures from the Older Literature ...... 196 

II. On the Eve of National Transplantation .... 204 

I. Prophets of the Dies Irae ......... 208 

II. The Book Found in the Temple 220 

III. Jeremiah : the Man and the Crisis ...... 228 

[xii] 



CONTENTS 
BOOK II. THE PEOPLE OF A BOOK 

PAGES 

Chapter VI. Literary Fruits of the Exile . . 254-369 

I. Literary Activities in Chaldea 257 

I. Ezekiel : Pastor and Reconstructor 257 

II. Daniel : Mage, and Revealer at Court . . . . . 278 

III. Second Isaiah : Finisher of the Vision 300 

II. The Literature of Reestablishment in the Holy 

Land 337 

I. Prophets of the Rebuilt Temple 340 

II. The Subsidence of Prophecy ......... 352 

Chapter VII. The Puritan Era and its Literature 370-425 

I. The Initiative from Babylon 372 

I. Post-Exilic Men of Letters and their Work . . . 373 

II. Ezra: Scribe and Scholar 379 

II. Legalism and its Austerities • 3^5 

I. The Jewish Mind and Mood . 385 

II. The Completed Pentateuch 391 

III. The Later Cultus Literature 403 

III. Reactions and Alleviations 4^4 

I. Veiled Signs of Reaction and Protest 416 

II. While the Big Book is Growing 424 

Chapter VIII. Treasury of the Choice Hebrew 

Classics 426-520 

I. Traits of the Collection as a Whole ...... 427 

II. The Three Great Classics 432 

I. The Five Books of Psalms 432 

II. Proverbs : Garnered Counsel from the Wise . . . 448 

III. Job: Crucial Test of the Heart of Man 463 

III. The Five Megilloth 482 

I. Uses and Estimates of the Group 482 

II. Traits of the Individual Books 485 

IV. On the Literary Frontier • • • • 51° 

I. The Visioned and the Settled . . 511 

II. The Pause between the Testaments . . . . . . 517 

[ xiii ] 



GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 
BOOK III. THE PEOPLE OF THE WAY 

PAGES 

Chapter IX. The Son of Man 526-581 

I. Expectation and Answer 527 

I. The Prophetic Herald 530 

II. The Old Order Changes ^ . . . 534 

III. Initiating the Christ-Idea . ......... 537 

II. The Literary Element in Jesus' Ministry .... 543 

I. His General Public Utterances 544 

II. His Teaching in Parables 548 

III. His Encounters with Human Falsity 554 

IV. His Utterances in Divine Character 558 

V. His Acts in Divine Character 562 

III. Bearing Witness to the Truth s^5 

I. The Great Confession and its Sequel 567 

II. Reckoning on Departure 571 

III. Rounding Off the Earthly Ministry 577 

Chapter X. The Literature of Fact 582-607 

I. The Apostles and their Initial Message 583 

I. Their Fitting Kind of Work ........ 585 

II. Four Phases of the First Apostolic Message . . . 588 

II. The Growth of the Synoptic Gospels 59^ 

I. The Germinating Time 592 

II. Source- Gospels and Logia 594 

HI. The Synoptic Gospels as Completed 598 

III. The Acts of the Apostles 604 

'^I. As Continuation of a Prior History 604 

II. As Related to the Planting of Christianity . . . . 605 

Chapter XL The Literature of Values ... 608-654 

I. Literary Gifts and Medium of Publication- • . . 611 

I. The Writers and their Qualifications 61 1 

II. The Epistle Form and its Uses 613 

II. Saint Paul as Orator and Letter Writer .... 615 

I. Saint Paul the Man ^ 616 

II. Saint Paul the Orator 620 

[xiv] 



CONTENTS 

PAGES 

III. Letters of the Active Missionary 623 

IV. Letters of the Roman Prisoner 628 

III. From Jewish to Christian Idiom 633 

I. Hebrews, and the FulfiUment of Types 634 

II. James, and the Wisdom from Above 636 

III. Epistles from Jesus' Personal Circle 638 

IV. The Legacy of the Beloved Disciple 641 

I. Who was the Beloved Disciple? 641 

II. The Story Told Once More 645 

III. The " Postscript Commendatory" 651 

Chapter XII. The Resurgence of Prophecy . . 65^-677 

I. Toward the End of the Era 659 

I. The Presage in Jesus' Words 660 

II. In the Light of Common Day 663 

II. The Revelation of John 664 

I. The Apocalyptic Warrant 665 

II. Its Symbolism, Inherited and Initiated 668 

III. The Reality within the Symbol 673 

Index 679 



[XV] 



A GUIDEBOOK TO THE 
BIBLICAL LITERATURE 



For worthy deeds are not often destitute of worthy relaters, as by a cer- 
tain Fate great Acts and great Eloquence have most commonly gone hand 
in hand, equalling and honoring each other in the same Ages. — Milton 

These people have a secret ; . . . they have discerned the way the world 
was going, and therefore they have prevailed. — Matthew Arnold 



[^] 



A GUIDEBOOK TO THE 
BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

A PRELIMINARY SURVEY 

AFTER a lifelong conversance with literature, in which 
L field he did the world great service and nobly wore 
himself out, Sir Walter Scott, in his last illness, requested 
his son-in-law Lockhart to read to him. When asked from 
what book, he replied, " Need you ask ? There is but one." 
And Lockhart read to him from the Bible. 

This tribute of a modern author to the venerable volume 
was not his alone. Nor did it express, as some would read 
it, either a sudden vivid conviction or a sick man's sense of 
last resort. It was the world's tribute, rendered long ago 
and reenforced by ages of ripened experience ; expressing 
the general judgment that here, of all books, is the one 
supremely great, the one that none others can supplant or 
emulate, the one embodying the essential values of all the 
rest. This idea is implicit in the name that soon after its 
completion was given to it : The Bible, — not a specific title 
at all, for it means simply The Book. The epithet Holy, 
which was quite generally added to the name, is of the same 
implication, expressing as it does its separateness from and 
superiority to all other books. 

The term The Bible, from the Greek ta bib Ha, meaning 
originally "the booklets," or "little books" (more strictly 
What's in '' little papers," for biblos was the Greek word for 
the Name papyrus), recognizes the volume before us as a 
body of literature distributed in a collection of smaller works ; 

[3] 



GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

which it obviously is. These works, however, though diverse, 
are not fortuitous or miscellaneous but of a selected and 
classified character ; wherefore the volume, as now made up, 
is often spoken of as a sacred canon or library. The name 
''bible" was not given to the collection until the selecting and 
amassing of the booklets, in both Old and New Testaments, 
was . virtually or quite complete ; and soon thereafter the 
word, originally a plural, was understood and construed as a 
singular. Thus out of the sense of diversity grew the sense 
of unity and comprehensiveness. The name crystallizes the 
book's history. Beginning with the most unpretending 
claims, making its way by its intrinsic worth, not com- 
pelling assent but winning it, the Bible has established 
itself by its broad and varied scope, its homogeneity, and 
its developed unity of theme, as the world's supreme classic. 
In such comprehensive scope it calls for appraisal to-day. 
The Bible is at once, and in equally true sense of all three 
distinctions : a literature, a library, and a book. 

Note. Its Designations. It was about the middle of the second 
century a.d. that the name "Bible" was generally adopted; and the 
word seems to have changed from plural to singular in its transition 
from Greek to Latin. The name given in the Bible itself to the col- 
lection of sacred writings (comprising the Old Testament series) is 
s'pharijn, books; see for instance, Dan. ix, 2: "I, Daniel, understood 
by the books," among which he specifies the prophecy of Jererhiah. 
The New Testament writers speak of the Old Testament books as 
hai graphai, the writings (Latin scriptures) ; see, for instance, Acts 
xvii, 11: " examining the scriptures [tas graphas) daily," where the 
body of Old Testament literature is meant. 



The Bible as a Literature. As a gradually accumulated 
deposit of literary works the Bible coincides, in time and in 
progress of ideas, with the national history of a people of 
Semitic origin inhabiting the small land of Palestine, at the 
eastern end of the Mediterranean Sea, and called at successive 

[4] 



A PRELIMINARY SURVEY 

stages of their history Hebrews, Israelites, and Jews. During 
this race's unique national experience this literature, as put 
into form by its poets, sages, historians, and prophets, embod- 
ied its' sanest thinking and far-reaching ideals ; was in fact 
the education and making of that peculiarly gifted people. 

The basis of ^ this literature, its underlying tissue, is his- 
toric and prophetic. That is to say, nearly all the works 
preserved to us are pretty directly concerned with this 
people's national experience ; not indeed in the mere annal- 
istic or political sense, but as discerning its inner meanings, 
as related to the elemental claims of God and duty and 
destiny. This it is which gives the literature its hold on 
succeeding times and peoples ; for of all ancient races the 
Hebrew race was preeminent for the depth, the clearness, 
and the intensity of its spiritual intuitions. Its numerous 
writers, whoever they were, had in large and like degree the 
poet's and prophet's endowment of 

such large discourse, 
Looking before and after ; 

and this was their undying gift to humanity. 

The literature surviving to us in the Bible covers, in its 
composition, a period from about 1250 b.c.^ to about 
In its His- lOO A.D. In its literary development this long 
toric Setting period falls naturally into three stages, which in 
our present study are considered in three books. 

Note. The Starting Point. This period of about 1350 years is 
reckoned from the Song of Deborah, Judges v, perhaps the earHest 
literary piece which as a whole can be taken as contemporaneous with 
its event, to the completion of the Gospels, which may be put at about 
100 A.D. The Song of Miriam at the Red Sea, Exod. xv, is in part 
as old as its event, and there are other early fragments which will be 
noted in their place; but the Song of Deborah makes a convenient 
starting point alike in history and in literature, from which we can 
reckon both backwards and forwards. 

1 For the dates in Old Testament chronology I follow mostly those 
given in Kautszch's " Literature of the Old Testament." 

[5] 



GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

1. Its earliest works, which we read as quoted bits of 
song and parable more or less fragmentary, embedded in its 
later compiled history, date from a time when the Hebrew 
people, newly delivered from Egyptian bondage, were strug- 
gling for foothold and independence in the land of Canaan. 
With the organization of the monarchy under David and 
Solomon a corresponding literary impulse was awakened, 
which, increasing in breadth, diffusion, and conscious art, 
followed the fortunes of the state through the rise and 
decline of the two kingdoms of Israel and Judah, deter- 
mined the various lines of literary utterance and form, and 
reached the vigor of its formative period at about the time 
of the Chaldean exile, in the beginning of the sixth century 
before Christ. It is during this period that the literature 
interacts most intimately with the history of the nation. 
We have named this period ''The Formative Centuries." 

2. Through the subsequent centuries of life under foreign 
dominance, until the coming of Christ, during which period 
the national interest subsisted largely on the glories of its 
past, the activities of men of letters were directed to com- 
piling, revising, and completing the works which the pre- 
exilic period had as it were left in the rough ; molding 
them into more matured and self-conscious literary forms ; 
and coordinating them into a canon for educational and 
devotional uses. In this period the prophet and creative 
historian is succeeded by the scholar and scribe. Its liter- 
ary evolution is traced under the name '' The People of a 
Book " ; the book in question being the Old Testament, 
as a collection of laws, prophecies, histories, poems, and 
didactic precepts, 

3. With the Old Testament, the Jewish canon, the Bib- 
lical literature of a race is closed, but it contains many inti- 
mations of unfinality and presages of a larger consummation. 
The new era opens, seventy years before the break-up of the 
Jewish state, with the coming of Jesus. Then later, under 

[6] 



A PRELIMINARY SURVEY 

the vitalizing power of his ministry and personahty, a new 
literature gradually rises, related to the old as fulfillment to 
promise, as realization to hope and symbol ; a literature 
which from Jewish and ethnical becomes Christian and 
universal. Thus out of the literature of a race is developed 
the literature of humanity, which all races and ages can 
appropriate. The latest works of this new type of utterance 
date from about a generation after the destruction of Jeru- 
salem and the downfall of the Jewish state, which event 
occurred a.d. 70. We consider this period under the name 
"The People of the Way." 

At every stage, until the coming of Jesus, the Biblical 
literature is closely inwoven with national and race affairs ; 
a running accompaniment of Hebrew history, especially of 
its wider and more imaginative stage called Israelite, en- 
forcing its spiritual values for present and future. After 
Jesus' coming it ignores the affairs of state, being concerned 
with the facts and values of the new order which, through 
his ministry and the activities of his apostles, is gaining 
foothold and power in the larger world. The "ideas of this 
new Christian order it not only sets forth in their own 
intrinsic light but coordinates at every step with the values 
that the past through its history and culture has revealed. 

The fact that this body of literature has so laid hold on 
the universal heart of man as to have become the Bible, the 
I t T h r^'^^^^d book of counsel and authority for the 
with Nations most enlightened nations of the world, and to 
and imes h^ye been, as it still is, a main factor of their 
greatness, rouses inquiry as to what causes could have been 
great enough to produce so immense an effect. The thought 
of the factors concerned in it — land, history, people — 
yields at first consideration only a sense of discrepancy. It 
was a small and sequestered land, a dim and out-of-the-way 
history, a people quite undistinguished for arts or learning, 
and never great " in conquest or statecraft. To explain the 

[7] 



GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

power of their literature much has been made, and rightly, 
of divine superintendence and inspiration. But the divine 
accommodates itself to human methods and means, and 
these we can measure. And if these in themselves do not 
suffice to fill out the solution, we can at least note what part 
they play and what points they reach in the problem. 

To gauge so tremendous an effect, however, we must take 
in a somewhat commensurate scope of historic and spiritual 
forces. The Biblical literature was secreted from many cen- 
turies of time, and interacted with the most spacious human 
issues. Its power to naturalize itself among all peoples and 
ages was well and truly earned. How this was, let a few 
words of summary attempt to show. 

The land from which we get the Bible was indeed small ; 
'' the least of all lands " it has been called ; but being just 
at the meeting-place of three continents, and traversed by 
the main international routes of travel, traffic, and war, it 
was for the play of historic forces focal and pivotal. • No 
other ancient land was so favorably situated to be the labora- 
tory for the working out of a world purpose.^ The period 
covered by the literature may be described in the large as 
that millennium of antiquity which witnessed the evolution 
of a world order out of primitive chaos and anarchy. It was 
that momentous era during which, as in a huge melting-pot, 
multitudes of turbulent tribes with their warring gods and* 
confused religions were first gradually subdued in the rude 
unity of great unwieldy monarchies, — Egypt, Assyria,' Baby- 
lonia, Persia, Greece, — and eventually, through the organ- 
izing genius of the Romans, amalgarnated in a world-wide 
merger of empire. It was, in other words, the embryotic 

1 " Palestine was, in a very real sense, the physical centre of those 
movements of history from which the modern world has grown." — 
W. R. Smith, " Prophets of the Old Testament," p. 338. " The Jewish and 
Christian Scriptures had their origin ... at the meeting-place of the great 
tides of human thought, the centuries-long intercharige of experience and 
ideas." — Geden, " Introduction to the Hebrew Bible," p. 353. 

[8] 



A PRELIMINARY SURVEY 

period in the birth of a general human civiHzation. The 
same period, in its fitting time, witnessed the rise and 
diffusion of Greek arts and culture, the spread of com- 
merce, and the opening comity of racial intercourse. Thus 
all around this little land of Palestine, as well as within it, 
a field was being prepared and spiritual forces were con- 
centrating themselves as if- toward the fulfillment of some 
vast design. 

And there at the center of things, involved with the rest, 
dwelt a peculiarly gifted people, who as monarchy succeeded 
monarchy came successively into intimate relations with 
them all ; not indeed as a conquering or favored people, 
but rather as tributary and despised, yet distinguished from 
others by the intrinsic superiority of their spiritual insight 
and their educated conscience. This set them apart by 
themselves, as had indeed been prophesied of them, — 

Lo, it is a people that dwelleth alone, 

And shall not be reckoned among the nations (Num. xxiii, 9), — 

and yet by that higher spiritual endowment gave them func- 
tion and mission as a central repository of religious light and 
moral law for the guidance of all nations. Of this distinc- 
tion their foremost prophets became aware and deduced 
its ideal before their captivity and dispersion ;i the ideal 
became real only through the consummation afforded by 
the greatest personage of their history, Jesus Christ. 

As a nation planted in the midst among other and more 
powerful ones, and later as a people dispersed abroad and 
tributary at home, the Israelites were exposed successively 
to the influence of all the great civilizations of the ancient 
world ; meeting each, too, just when its power was in its 
prime. This contact doubtless did much to enlarge and 
liberalize their own religious culture ; made them to a de- 
gree receptive of ideas on which they and other nations 

1 Cf. Isa. ii, 2—4. 

[9] 



GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

could occupy common ground. It is to be observed, how- 
ever, that most of this exposure to the larger world came 
when the Hebrew religious idea was well matured ; at the 
height of the formative centuries, when the nation could 
measure its spiritual stamina with that of its conquerors. 
Here its loyalty to race and sound tradition prevailed. It 
made the people's attitude reactive and self-reliant ; kept 
them from being merged with others ; gave sharpness and 
contour to the ideas which they had inherited from their 
fathers. They had greater literary values to give than to 
receive. And the fact of survival, intact and purified, wHile 
the chaotic cults and creeds of other nations went under, 
proves the master power that the Hebrew literature pos- 
sessed. It was like the clearness and reasonableness and 
sanity after which the confused myths and rites of other 
nations had been groping. Such was the foundation that 
the Old Testament literature laid for the later Christian 
structure represented in the literature of the New Testa- 
ment. It was the vehicle of a spiritual force which had 
emerged from the dimness of prehistoric times ; which 
had gathered head through generations of educative and 
prophetic leading ; until, when its mission was ripe, it was 
ready to precipitate its power into the mind of the world. 
Thus it fitted, as by a divine wisdom and purpose, into 
the providentially ordered movements of world history. 

The sacredness with which the Bible has been invested, 
owing to the conviction that it is an inspired revelation from 
In its Liter- God, has in time past had the effect of removing 
ary Quality jt from common handling and putting it in a 
class by itself. No other book has had such usage as has 
befallen it. It has been approached with trembling caution 
as if it were a ''live wire"; has been believed indiscrimi- 
nately, as if its every statement were an oracle ; has been 
used for divination, like the sortes Virgiliance \ has been 
forced upon men arbitrarily, as a book of despotic dogma ; 

[,o] 



A PRELIMINARY SURVEY 

has been made the court of final appeal not only in matters 
of faith and character but in history and natural science. 
All this makes it harder to approach the Bible in the candid 
good faith which we accord to other books. But its original 
utterances were never so intended. It is not esoteric. It 
does not deal in mysteries and enigmas. It invites candor 
and verification. It uses the speech of common men, and 
moves in the everyday relations of life. It appeals, like all 
other books, to the verdict of reason and sound intuition. 
In a word, it is a literature, with all the marks and moods 
of human literature. As a human literature it uses the 
means and methods of literary art; it is subject also to 
human varieties and limitations of knowledge and insight 
and skill. As the representative literature of a race, too, it 
has a tone and temperament of its own, the reflection of 
that race's mind and heart. 

It is only in comparatively recent years that the Bible 
has been studied frankly as a literature, or associated with 
such traits of style and invention as are recognized in other 
books. It has been taken as a book all on one level of style, 
and all expressed in a solemn austere tone suitable only to 
occasions of worship. And even the attention that has thus 
far been given to its literary character has largely followed 
'' the direction which modern study so often takes, of put- 
ting inquiry into origins above everything, and neglecting 
the consideration of the work as work." ^ Such inquiry 
is only one element of research, and that only subsidiary 
and external. 

As we treat the Bible like other books, however, and 
get into the spirit and purpose of it, we find that instead 
of being in uniform style throughout, it has all the freedom 
and variety that characterizes other literature. There are 
in it all the personal elements which make literature human 
and vital. We find here the lyric intensity of poetry, the 

1 Quoted from Saintsbury, " The English Novel," p. 24. 

[II] 



GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

impassioned appeal of public address, the compact phrasing 
of aphorism, the limpid flow of narrative, the easy famil- 
iarity of conversation and epistle ; all fitted like speech to 
author, audience, and occasion. It rests throughout on a 
basis of history and matter of fact ; it contains also works 
of fiction, allegory, and parable. Some of its truths are 
expressed in severely literal terms ; others are figurative 
and symbolic, or molded in the imagery of prophetic vision. 
Many moods and tastes are represented, as befits the range 
of subjects and the personality of writers. 

The general style is indeed that of the fervid Oriental 
mind, which in its intensity and imaginative color differs 
from our cooler approach to things ; but this very style, as 
the vehicle of its lofty subject matter, has shown a wonder- 
ful power to naturalize itself among modern nations. It has 
proved a truly creative idiom. This is seen, for instance, in 
the tremendous debt which the German and English lan- 
guages owe to their translations of the Bible. Our English 
speech and literature are permeated with Biblical terms, 
figures, and phraseology, which, apart from as well as inti- 
mately associated with our religious ideals, have given a dis- 
tinctive tone and fiber to our most sterling literary style. 



II 

The Bible as a Library. We are dealing indeed with a 
long-developed literature, a deposit from the literary mind 
and art of centuries. But it is not a casual or miscellaneous 
accumulation. It is a literature winnowed, tested, classified, 
a series of books on which scholars and critics have worked, 
in conformity with the creative idea at the root of the 
race's life. Its various books are arranged and correlated 
in one consistent trend and spirit. Hence the name here 
given to the collection : a library, or, to use the more formal 
term, a canon. The scripture canon is the selected and 

[12] 



A PRELIMINARY SURVEY 

edited body of works which as a collection make for a 
certain principle and purpose. 

The gathering and arranging of these works into a 
library, which for the Old Testament was done after the 
Jews' return from exile, was the first step in the recognition 
of their essential unity of relation. As time went on this 
canon came to be regarded as a cycle, complete in its line 
and closed to further additions ; a library of the nation's 
classics, deemed standard and authoritative. After the liter- 
ature had advanced, however, from Jewish interpretations 
to Christian, the collection was reopened, and a new canon, 
that of the New Testament, was added ; which in its turn be- 
came, in like manner settled and closed to further additions. 

Note. The Term " Ca7iojt.^'' The word " canon," from the Greek 
kanon. meaning a reed, that is, a measuring reed, refers to the test or 
proof to which the books were subjected in order to be judged worthy 
of a place and rank in the sacred library. What this standard was is 
obscure ; but we feel its influence in the character of the works chosen, 
in the absence of irrelevant material, and in the difference from works 
still extant which were denied a place in the canon. As one contem- 
plates the final result, so seemingly fortuitous yet so rounded and 
finished, one gets the same sense as frorti the composition of the works 
themselves : that there was a divine superintendence and control of the 
process, and that " the builders builded better than they knew." 

In tracing the literature from its beginnings, we have to 
go back beyond the age of written works and think of a 
Th s k ^^^& pre-literary period during which ideas were 
and the convcyed orally, in the primitive forms of song, 

ntten £^jj^ ^^l^^ parable, and proverb. It was such spon- 
taneous utterance as passes by word of mouth from^ father 
to son, from teacher to pupil, from the man gifted in speech 
or poetic feeling to the^ common hearer ; and it took the 
plain wording and phrase adapted to quick understanding 
and easy retention in memory. For publication and dis- 
semination it depended on oral tradition ; and the people's 
mind developed an aptitude to retain it in as exact and 

■ [13] 



GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

stereotyped form as if it were written down. So it seems to 
have been until near the close of the formative period ; and 
by that time the type of literary utterance was well fixed. 
It was simple, large, natural ; it was strong and vital ; it 
was direct and personal ; it laid the foundation of the Bib- 
lical literary style. Thus oral transmission, the word spoken 
or chanted, became the popular unit of literary utterance, 
which the later self-consciousness of the man of letters 
could not avail to make academic and artificial. 

It would be a mistake, however, to suppose that those 
pre-literary times had no written works. There are evi- 
dences that they had. There are inscriptions and letters 
still in existence which are much older than the Hebrew 
nation. Things were written down, however, not for popu- 
lar reading (for ages passed before the Hebrews became 
a reading people), but for safe-keeping and permanence ; 
such things as laws, statutes, oracles, archives, — not litera- 
ture but as it were the bones of literature ; and if read at 
all were read to the people, not by them. This motive of 
safe-keeping and permanence, always strong, became domi- 
nant as the people became increasingly conscious of their 
national idea and hope. It led them indeed to attach a 
greater value to the written word than to the spoken, to 
the book than to the voice. From the beginning of their 
national life the Hebrews had an extraordinary regard for 
anything in written form. There was something fixed and 
final about it ; it was to them the symbol of truth expressed 
not in a fluid and tentative way but with the conclusiveness 
of finished thought ; and the prophet or scribe who could 
wield the pen was revered as a man of unique distinction. 

Note. Primitive Written Records. When the Hebrews had their 
national beginnings in the wilderness and Canaan, the greater nations 
around them already had a large body of annals, laws, and religious 
poems, permanently engraved on stone. The code of Hammurabi, 
which contains many laws similar to the later laws of Moses, had been in 

['4] 



A PRELIMINARY SURVEY 

existence in some temple of Babylonia since the time of Abraham. The 
ten " words," or commandments, of Moses were engraved on two tablets 
of stone (Exod. xxxiv, 28), and laid away in the ark (Deut. x, 3-5) 
where more than three centuries later they still were (i Kings viii, 9). 
Isaiah is directed to write important oracles on tablets for a sign of 
truth (Isa. viii, 1,16) and permanence (xxx, 8). The same feeling of the 
finality of a written record, and longing for it, is expressed in con- 
nection with the celebrated Redeemer passage in the Book of Job 
(Job xix, 23, 24): — 

Oh that my words were now written ! 

Oh that they were inscribed in a book ! 

That with an iron pen and lead 

They were graven in the rock forever ! 

This sentiment of extraordinary reverence for the book 
doubtless rose from the sense of what a serious matter 
writing was in primitive times. When its material was 
tablets of stone or clay, on which the words were labori- 
ously incised, the subject matter would naturally be con- 
densed to the briefest and weightiest records, and be 
confined to subjects of public and impersonal interest. 
With the use of parchment, however, and the invention of 
alphabetic writing, facility of writing was greatly increased, 
and with it a corresponding facility of the written idea. 
With the diminished labor and more tractable material 
writing could acquire more of the freedom and flow of 
speech, could more easily amplify and enrich the expres- 
sion, could go on to greater range and fullness of treatment. 
All this was like an approach of the written to the spoken. 
At the same time, with the refinement of literary taste and 
art, the value of the works hitherto floating about in .oral 
tradition, and their worthiness to be perpetuated in a more 
permanent way, would be increasingly recognized ; while 
the oral composition itself, the poem or prophecy, was with 
advancing culture making approach to the carefulness and 
restraint of the written word. The great formative period 
of the literature, corresponding roughly to Israel's independ- 
ence and autonomy as a state, is virtually a long transition 

[15] 



GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

from literature of the purely oral type to literature of the 
written ; to a form in which every variety of sentiment could 
be expressed at once with the vigor and limpidness of speech 
and the artistic depth and complexity of studied writing. 
Its beginning is marked by the remains of song, oracle, and 
folk tale which we find embedded in the historical books ; 
its culmination, around the time of the Chaldean exile, by 
such great creative works as the Vision of Isaiah, the Book 
of Deuteronomy, and the Book of Job. 

Note. TJie hitei'relatioii of Speech a7id Wi'itiiig. Some remarks 
of Cardinal Newman, in " Idea of a University," p. 272, distinguish in 
a lucid way the motive underlying these two elements in literature. 
" Literature," he says, '' from the derivation of the word, implies 
writing, not speaking; this, however, arises from the circumstance of 
the copiousness, variety, and public circulation of the matters of which 
it consists. What is spoken cannot outrun the range of the speaker's 
voice, and perishes in the uttering. When words are in demand to 
express a long course of thought, when they have to be conveyed to 
the ends of the earth, or perpetuated for the benefit of posterity, they 
must be written down, that is, reduced to the shape of literature." He 
goes on to say, however, that its unit, its basis, is the spoken word, 
with its connotation of personality, making literature not a mechanical 
thing but essentially " the personal use or exercise of language." 
It is this intensely personal element which makes the Biblical litera- 
ture vital. - 

As long as the Israelite state remained intact, the 
prophets and men of letters had relatively little occasion 
The Move- ^^ collect and classify the stores of literature that 
mentto had accumulated through the centuries of their 

°^^®,^* national life. Their regards were centered rather 

in maintaining the welfare of the people and the integrity 
of the government in its current and prospective needs ; 
and for this a vigorous literary activity was ready, as the 
occasions for it rose. The spirit of the literature, as mani- 
fested most strongly in the literary prophets, was creative, 
originative, concerned with the immediate problems of the 
nation's life and destiny.. 

[.6] 



A PRELIMINARY SURVEY 

When, however, the nation's poUtical hopes failed, and 
by two exiles, the Assyrian (722 b.c.) and the Chaldean 
(597 and 586 B.C.), the people found themselves a hope- 
lessly scattered and subject race, the regards of the nation's 
men of letters were turned in a new direction. They were 
still united, and more than ever, in the great religious and 
moral ideas that had given them a spiritual superiority to 
other races ; and whether dispersed over the earth or 
returned from exile in their home, they felt the exceeding 
value of the store of literature in which those ideas had 
been evolved. The works of their heroic past became 
classic ; the great events and personalities of their history 
acquired a distinction which had not been realized while 
their history was being made. Accordingly the prophetic 
spirit, which had been concerned with issues of present 
and future, gradually subsided, and succeeding writers 
worked rather in the spirit of the scribe and the scholar, 
concerned with preserving the works inherited from the 
past and with making them educative for the changed 
conditions of the national life. 

This movement to give the ancient literature a new lease 
of life had two phases, which we may call an editorial and a 
selective ; both characteristic of a literary mood which from 
spontaneous and adventurous had become self-conscious 
and critical. 

Already, a century or more before the Exile, the editorial 
mood, the movement to revise, round out, and complete 
the older literary works, was well under way. These works 
existed in more or less scattered and inchoate form ; some 
of them were composed for conditions too primitive to suit 
later needs ; many of them had to be reduced from oral tra- 
dition to written form. To bring these archaic remains up 
to date, making them available for more modern uses, was a 
natural impulse of the matured literary sense. Old stories 
of patriarchs and judges, kings and prophets, were gathered 

[17] 



GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

and coordinated into a continuous history ; ancient laws 
were put into popular form and modernized ; hymns for 
public worship were adapted to new religious or historical 
situations ; maxims and aphorisms of the sages were col- 
lected and compiled. Thus the older literature was not only 
gathered from its scattered depositories ; it was also • kept 
renewed and moving by appreciative editorial work. 

Note. Preexilic Evidences of this Editorial Work. All the early 
historic books, from Genesis to 2 Samuel, are composite, the work 
of editorial compilers who availed themselves of the ancient literary 
materials of various ages, incorporating much that was unchanged, 
but adding connecting links, summaries, notes of explanation, and the 
like; and most of this literature was so nearly complete that only the 
scholarly activity of the Exile, culminating in Ezra the scribe, was 
needed to finish it. The Book of Deuteronomy was probably edited 
from a " book of the law " found in the Temple in 622 B.C. (see 
2 Kings xxii). The section of the Book of Proverbs from chapter xxv 
to xxix is said to have been compiled by " the men of Hezekiah King 
of Judah" (727-699; see Prov. xxv, i). These are only salient examples 
of what must have been a vigorous literary occupation. 

After the return from exile, during the four centuries 
preceding the coming of Jesus, while the attitude of the 
Jews toward other races and creeds became more intolerant 
and exclusive, the literary mood became more critical and 
selective, the activities of the scribes being directed to 
determining what works should find a place in their canon, 
and to classifying them according to their subject matter 
and form. Into the history of this movement we cannot 
enter here. Its motive is apparent. The people of the 
widely dispersed race must be kept true to their inherited 
ideas, not only at home in Palestine where the Temple and 
priesthood were, but throughout the lands of their disper- 
sion where their synagogues were the local centers of com- 
munal life, education, and worship ; and' this selected library 
must be the uniting and integrating factor. Besides this, 
maintaining so loyally as they everywhere did their racial 

[18] 



A PRELIMINARY SURVEY 

individuality, they must make their idea good against the 
invasion of other customs and Uteratures and prove their 
own vi^orthiness to survive. To this end, out of the rich 
stores of their venerable literature they must select and 
coordinate what was worthy to become classic and reject 
what was below or aside from the standard. Thus in course 
of time the canon formed itself out of the books that were 
deemed to have a fitting function in the nation's library. 
Before the time of Christ this canon had not only been 
determined, as to range and order, but translated into 
Greek, which had become the cultural language of the 
world ; and it was the Greek version (the so-called Septua- 
gint) which was used and supplemented by the writers of 
the New Testament canon. 

Notes, i. The Original Order of the Old Testament Ca?ion. As 
originally arranged the Hebrew canon, covering our Old Testament, 
has a somewhat different order from what we have in our Bible. It 
falls into three great divisions, which represent three stages of selection 
and compilation, and which were named respectively the Law, the 
Prophets, and the Writings or Scriptures. The following is a brief 
tabulation of them : 

(i) The Law, sometimes called the five fifths of the law, Greek 
Pentateuch : Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy. 

(2) The Prophets, namely, {a) Earlier Prophets : Joshua, Judges, 
Samuel (two books in one). Kings (also undivided) ; {b) Later Prophets : 
Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, The Twelve (all the minor prophets being 
comprehended in one book). 

(3) The Writings, Greek Hagiographa, namely, {a) the antholo- 
gies' : Psalms, Proverbs, Job ; {p) the Megilloth, or Rolls : Canticles, 
Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, Esther ; {c) Unclassified : Daniel, 
Ezra, Nehemiah, Chronicles. 

In the preface to the apocryphal Book of Ecclesiasticus (130 B.C.) 
these divisions are referred to as " the law, and the prophets, and the 
other books of our fathers." In Luke xxiv, 44, Jesus speaks of these 
as " the law of Moses, and the prophets, and the psalms," designating 
the third division by its first book. ~ 

2. The Supplementary {New Testament) Cufwn. The Old Testa- 
ment canon, which was made up for uses of the Jewish religion and 

[19] 



GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

retained by the Jews, was adopted from the beginning by the Christian 
church, which indeed began as a Jewish sect. The New Testament 
canon, which in the course of two centuries was made up for Christian 
uses, supplements the former by adding the fulfillment and completion 
to which the old looks forward. Like the older canon, it puts its his- 
torical part, consisting of the four gospels and the Acts, first; but the 
second part, consisting of epistolary works from St. Paul and others, 
was written earlier than the completed gospels. In our study of Bib- 
lical literature the two canons are treated as harmonious with each 
other and in a way continuous ; for our purposes indeed the two are 
one library, making the whole Bible a unitary cycle of literature. 

. Two important results of this development from a mis- 
cellaneous literature to a coordinated library or canon are to 
:_ . J be noted and borne in mind as we study, 
this Library I . Much of the literature we have in a revised 
Selection form, adapted to conditions later than those of 
•the first composition. The revisions were indeed made 
conscientiously and with remarkable skill and sympathy ; 
,but sometimes differing versions of the same event may 
be interwoven, or introduced side by side without attempt 
to reduce discrepancies. Customs and ideas which have 
grown obsolete may be interpreted by standards of the 
later time when the final account was given. Primitive 
elements may exist among the more matured and refined. 
In other words, the Bible literature, owing to the conditions 
in which it was developed, is very largely a composite 
literature, containing elements of varying age and mintage. 
This fact increases the difficulty of historic verification ; . but 
it does not impair, it enhances rather, the spiritual and 
literary value of the whole, because the editorial work has 
softened the crudities of style and presented the truth of 
the theme in a more finished and uniform edition. 

2. The various books and their component parts were 

written in one order, an order following in the large the 

historical experience of the nation. As an arranged library, 

.however, they are to be read and estimated in another order, 

[20] 



A PRELIMINARY SURVEY 

an order rather of dependence than of chronology. The 
books of earUest theme, Uke Genesis, were not the earhest 
written ; and they contain evidences of a more advanced 
and matured thinking than do some other books, like for 
instance Judges. Leviticus contains a later development of 
law than Deuteronomy. The prophets, which in the canon 
come after the historical books, have to be fitted into the 
history by internal evidence ; and generally they come be- 
fore the Mosaic law is completed, though the latter is in 
Hebrew estimation the first division of the Bible, both in 
time and importance. 

The noting of such historical connections as these has 
in the last half century revolutionized and greatly illumi- 
nated Biblical research ; it is in fact the main business of 
what is called the Higher Criticism. It is to be valued not 
blindly nor exclusively, but for what it is worth. The study 
of the Bible in its canonical order has its advantages too ; 
and the present and eternal values do not depend on our 
knowledge of ancient history. 



III 

The Bible as a Book. The editorial and selective move- 
ment by which a race's literature was winnowed and reduced 
to a classified library was but a stage in a movement greater 
still, whose full significance could not well come to light 
until the culminating stage was reached, to complete and 
round out the whole. 

This culminating stage of the Biblical literature is com- 
prised in the New Testament. With this body of writings, 
to draw the meanings of things into unity and coordination, 
it is seen that the Bible resolves itself into a single book. 
It has the authentic traits of an organic and homogeneous 
individual work of literature. Like any well-planned book 
it has one inclusive plot or theme ; it has a single purpose, 



GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

a correlation of parts, a consistently developed movement, 
a fitting denouement ; it has a unitary ideal, to which its 
whole scheme of character, object, and event is related. 
Thus it has earned its unique title : The Book. 

What all this book movement is, in outline, will appear 
as we trace the story of a literature some thirteen hundred 
years in the making. Its beginnings emerge from dim 
prehistoric times whose conditions can be traced only by 
spiritual insight. It is closely interwoven with the progress 
of a nation's history ; and yet its truth is larger than his- 
torical events can compass or explain. It is enmeshed with 
the thoughts and motives of human nature from manhood's 
primitive elements ; and yet by a steady prophetic pulsation 
it sweeps onward beyond the natural course of human 
tendency until the human blends with the divine. By 
reason of this spiritual movement and high culmination 
it is that this book, so many ages in the making, bears 
emphatic marks of one superintending Mind, one organic 
purpose. It is impossible to account for all that the Book 
is without holding it to be as truly the word of God as 
the composition of man. 

Without attempting to measure the divine factor in this 
movement, however, we may here note two cardinal ele- 
Rationaieof "^^^^^^ reciprocally related to each other, which 
the Biblical work together to make the Bible a unitary book. 
Movement j^^ ^^^^ -^^ ^^^^ throughout the Old Testament 

range of utterance its authors had, in varying degrees as 
occasion called, a prophetic intuition and conviction of their 
people's duty and destiny, and shaped their literary work 
accordingly. The Old Testament is a forward-looking book. 
It is imbued with the idea that the unique history it records 
is history working to an end. Of the racial traits that come 
to. light in it, none is more constant than what has been 
called ''the habitual expectancy of the Semitic mind";^ 

1 G. A. Smith, " Book of the Twelve Prophets," Vol. I, p. 15. 

[22] 



/^ 



A PRELIMINARY SURVEY 

and of all the strains of literary utterance represented the 
most vital and potent is the prophetic. 

The second element is, that as the Personage whose 
words and ministry are the soul of the New Testament 
was imbued with the dynamic spirit of this prophetic liter- 
ature, he set himself consciously and determinately to trans- 
late its ideals into terms of human life. He made it his 
vocation to interpret, to correct, and to fulfill what the men 
of truest intuition in the ages before had dimly foreseen 
ought to be. The life of Jesus and the literature that 
gathered round and derived from it are as truly expressed 
in terms of completion and fulfillment as the Old Testament 
is in terms of promise and expectation. 

Thus, with these two factors prophecy and fulfillment 
answering in their order to each other, the Bible may be 
regarded as essentially the story (may we not call it the 
epic .?) of the spiritual development of manhood, as this 
is revealed through the experiences of a nation specially 
endowed to this end, and as it culminates in a supreme Per- 
sonality in whom is revealed the Son of Man, which is to say 
the complete adult manhood. If we seek for the supreme 
interpreter of Biblical history and thought, the one without 
whom it would be a plot without a consummation, this is 
he. This is how the later Biblical writers read the course 
of the vast action, as its end and purpose lay unrolled 
before them. To this end all who wrought at the sublime 
literary structure — prophets, historians, evangelists, apostles 
— builded better than they knew, for an unseen Wisdom 
and Spirit wrought with them. And so as their work began 
with the vision of the primal spirit of man issuing raw and 
untried from the Creator's hand, it ended, after the '' dim 
and perilous way " of his spiritual education and growth 
had been traversed, with the vision, still going on to reali- 
zation, of ''the measure of the stature of the fullness of 
Christ," which is St. Paul's definition of *' a full-grown 



GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

man." No theme can be greater; no plot more masterly 
and comprehensive ; no solution of the vast problem so 
simple and true. Need you ask what is the Book" of Life } 
There is but one. All the rest are but broken fragments 
or pale reflections of its undying truth. 



[^4] 



BOOK I 

THE FORMATIVE CENTURIES 



There is a great difference between a book which is written by a 
particular individual and is dispensed by him among the people, and a 
book which makes a people itself. One cannot doubt that the book is 
as old as the people. — Pascal, Thoughts 



[26] 



THE FORMATIVE CENTURIES 

THE seven centuries during which the Hterature of the 
Hebrew people was gradually unfolding from elemen- 
tal to rounded form and content correspond roughly to the 
period of their independent existence as a state. The great 
epoch to which their prophets and historians looked back 
as a beginning was that of their deliverance, as unorganized 
tribes and families, from a life of bondage in Egypt, about 
1320 years before Christ. The influence of that event 
colored all their songs and stories with the sense of inti- 
mate dependence on their deliverer Jehovah, and with the 
presage of a high destiny and purpose. This continued, 
its meanings wrought out with increasing clearness and 
force, through a turbulent period of tribal anarchy under 
the Judges, in which days '* there was no king in Israel : 
every man did that which was right in his own eyes " 
(Judg. xvii, 6; xviii, i; xix, i; xxi, 25); through the 
organization of a kingdom under Saul, and its vigorous 
unity under David and Solomon ; through the varjed for- 
tunes of the two kingdoms of Judah and Israel, with their 
exposure to contentions within and invasions military and 
religious from without ; until the time was ripe for the 
people to undergo a momentous ordeal, the ordeal of de- 
portation and exile and dispersion. At the time of this 
event, that of the Chaldean captivity from 586 to 538 B.C., 
the Israelite people had in possession a noble store of litera- 
ture, accessible to all classes, from which they could derive 
hope and guidance for the unknown experiences yet to 
come. All the period thus covered was, as regards their 
racial and religious idea, a germinal and preparatory period ; 
which therefore we may call the Formative Centuries. , 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

These centuries were formative as well for the nation as 
for the literature. Beginning with a primitive aggregation 
of tribes and clans, so untrained to organization that a 
whole generation of wilderness education has to be under- 
gone before they are fit to colonize their allotted land, their 
corporate life has to grow through various advancing stages 
of civilization, — nomadic, pastoral, agricultural, — before 
they reach the organized and urban state in which they can 
be fully aware of their national idea and principle, and of 
their religious trend. They are finding themselves, pupils 
as it were, in the school of Jehovah. And during these 
centuries their peculiar formative idea must make itself 
good in the face of peoples stronger and more civilized 
than they, proving thus its fitness to survive and overcome. 
It must by varied experience and discovery prove its intrin- 
sic fitness to be the law of sterling manhood, among the 
speculations and idolatries and superstitions of the earth. 



[28] 



CHAPTER I 

SEMINA LITTERARUM 
[Till the end of the reign of David, cir. 970 B.C.] 

OF A PEOPLE whose unique mission it was to bring forth 
a Bible for the most enhghtened races of the world 
we need to know more than is implied in a census of ex- 
tant literary production. We need to know something of its 
native fitness for this mission ; of its endowments of mind, 
temperament, character ; of its distinctive gifts of insight 
and expression ; and of that more comprehensive spiritual 
energy which we may name its genius. It is among such 
elements as these that we are to trace the vital germs of its 

« 

literature, the Semina Litterarum. 

I. The Hebrew Mind 

The Bible is essentially a Hebrew book. It bears 
throughout the characteristic impress of the Hebrew mind. 
The Old Testament was written mostly in the Hebrew lan- 
guage ; and the different ages in which its various works 
were composed represent the language from its time of 
classical purity, when it was the people's vernacular, to the 
time when it was becoming a book language, and its place 
as a people's tongue was being taken by the closely allied 
Aramaic. The New Testament was written in Greek, and 
availed itself, especially in the more doctrinal portions, of 
Greek ways of thinking, at a time when the Greek mind 
was dominant in the culture and philosophy of the world. 
The New Testament writers read their Old Testament, too, 
in a Greek version. 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

This transition from Hebrew to Greek, however, while 
it enlarged and enriched the thinking of the later writers, 
did not determine it. The Hebrew genius prevails through- 
out : its peculiar racial coloring ; its inherited ideas of life ; 
its fidelity to conscience and morals ; its religious interpre- 
tations of history and experience ; its prophetic sense of 
manhood's mission and destiny. This is as true of the 
New Testament as of the Old ; for the New Testament is 
but the perpetuation and maturing of ideals that had long 
germinated in Hebrew minds. As our Lord Jesus himself 
said to the woman of Samaria, ''Salvation" — that is, the 
health of manhood — "is of the Jews" (John iv, 22). And 
the germinal principles of this were determined from the 
beginning of their history. 

Notes, i. The Language of the Old Testament. "All the Old 
Testament books are written in Hebrew, with the exception of parts of 
Daniel and Ezra, namely, Dan. ii, 4-vii, 28 ; Ezra iv, 8-vi, 1 8, vii, 
12-26, which are in Aramaic, a language closely allied to the Hebrew 
and at least as old. There is also a single Aramaic verse in the Book 
of Jeremiah, where it appears suddenly and perplexingly in the midst of 
a Hebrew paragraph (Jer. x, 11); and two Aramaic words in Genesis 
xxxi, 47, on the occasion when Laban the Aramean gives to the pile of 
stones set up for a testimony between himself and Jacob the name 
of Jegar-Sahadutha, which is merely the Aramaic equivalent of the 
Hebrew Gale-ed, ' heap of witness.' " ^ 

2. From Hebrew and Ara7naic to Greek. " Aramaic, as a vehicle 
for profound religious thought, was poor and inexpressive ■and halting 
compared with the richness and variety of the Greek. Though capable, 
no doubt, of development, it did not develop, unless to a very slight 
extent. Greek had ready a wealth of religious and philosophic termi- 
nology, equal, to the expression of the most exalted and far-reaching 
conceptions, and had already carried speculation to its furthest bounds. 
No other existing language could offer equal facilities to a doctrine 
that desired to be known, and a literature that claimed to have a mes- 
sage for all mankind. Aramaic yielded place to Greek, and for the 
world at large, for just and liberal thought, the change was fraught 
with ^inestimable gain."^ 

1 Geden, " Introduction to the Hebrew Bible," pp. 3, 4. 2 ibid, p. 167. 

[3°] 



SEMINA LITTERARUM 



Of the Hebrew mind thus represented in language and 
Uterature two aspects come up for consideration. 



The Genius of a Race. The Hebrews were of the Semitic 
race, whose original home was in Western Asia and Arabia. 
The main branches of this race were the Chaldeans, the 
Arabians, the Phoenicians, the Assyrians, and the Arameans ; 
of which last-named branch the Hebrews were a division. 
The name Hebrew is first applied to Abram, or Abraham, 
the great ancestor to whom the Hebrew people traced the 
beginnings and distinctive trend of their faith. In him, 
in his personal initiative, was embodied, as was felt, the 
peculiar genius of the Hebrew race. 

Notes, i. Abraha77t's Guiding Idea aitd its Sequel. The guiding 
idea which led 'Abram to migrate first from Ur of the Chaldees (Gen. 
xi, 31) to Haran in Mesopotamia, and later to Canaan (Gen. xii, 4, 5), 
is given in Gen. xii, 1-3, and several times repeated (see Gen. xiii, 
14-17; XV, S~l)'i reenforced by a change of name from Abram to 
Abraham, Gen. xvii, 4-8. He is first called Abram the Hebrew, 
Gen. xiv, 13; and his descendants are called Hebrews, Exod. iii, 18, 
and frequently. As late as the time of Jesus the Jews were proud of 
their Abrahamic descent (Matt, iii, 9), and recognized their essential 
freedom of spirit as from him (John viii, 33). His significance for 
the Jewish faith is summed up, in Ecclus. xliv, 19, 20; and for the 
Christian faith, Heb. xi, 8-12. 

2. Derivation of the Name " Hebrew.'''' The word " Hebrew " 
by its derivation means "one of the other side" — that is, of some 
boundary — and seems to refer to the fact that the Hebrew people 
came originally from beyond the Euphrates or perhaps beyond the 
Syrian desert. That general region, called anciently the land of Shinar 
(cf. Gen. xi, 2), was the cradle of the Semitic race and according to 
Bible ideas of the human race as well. 

Every energetic race derives its initiative, its habitual 
determination of character, from some personal formative 
influence, who by the power of his personality, or some 
deci'sive experience, has impressed his mind and ideal on 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

followers or descendants, and thus becomes to them a kind 
of spiritual organic principle. Hebrew history is rich in such 
As Deter- personal sources of influence, which will come 
mined by up for Consideration. We need mention here 
Initiative ^^^y the One from whom the race derived its 
primal impulse, the vital principle which distinguished the 
genius of this race from that of others. As one great 
family — the idea of which no national divisions or rival- 
ries availed to efface — the Hebrews traced their formative 
energy, in its most inclusive principle, to their great an- 
cestor Abraham, the patriarch from whom all their clans 
and tribes were descended. Round his life a store of 
traditions gathered, which in pre-literary times were trans- 
mitted from generation to generation, doubtless with in- 
creasing detail and realistic incident ; which traditions 
later assumed their final form and setting in the Book 
of Genesis. 

The energizing force of Abraham's personality, as well 
known to every Hebrew as is the Mayflower voyage and its 
motive to New Englanders, was a steadfast prophetic faith, 
a spirit of devout trust in God, which had impelled him to 
cut loose from country and kindred and migrate from his 
native Chaldea to a land yet unknown, where he could found 
a family and give it a purified ideal and direction. '' He 
believed in Jehovah," it is related of him, ''and he reck- 
oned it to him for righteousness " (Gen. xv, 6) ; a charac- 
terization which till the latest period of scripture literature 
wais held as a native norm of spiritual life (cf. Rom. iv, 3, 
9, 22 ; Gal. iii, 6 ; Jas. ii, 23). In this faith he became 
assured that he would be the ancestor of an innumerable 
offspring, and that in his seed all the nations of mankind 
would be blessed (Gen. xii, 2, 3 ; xvii, 4-8 ; xxii, 16-18). 

From its earliest self-expression the Hebrew temperament 
was keyed, as it were, to this note of faith : an attitude of 
spirit to be cherished and kept intact, and to be transmitted 

[32] 



SEMINA LITTERARUM 

as an ancestral heritage. It was the race's vital idea, like 
the modern sense of the Anglo-Saxon integrity or of the 
white man's burden. And it has remained, alike in religion 
and in practical affairs, the most elemental trait of the 
Hebrew nature, a latent motive working at the center of 
their varied experience, and kept living by their prophets 
and teachers. 

In Abraham this faith is primitive and, as it were, undif- 
ferentiated ; in his successors and descendants it matures 
in personal and broadly historical relations. 

Abraham's faith was passive : an implicit dependence 
upon and committal to the will and mandate of God. By 
A Rei ted ^^^^ ^^ ^^^ taken the decisive step beyond the 
to Racial introspcctive quietism of the far East, and the 
haracter rigidity of the Semitic mind, and centered his 
life on a divine guidance believed in as personal and real; 
His son Isaac continued this relatively neutral attitude, 
living and dying in peaceful relations with . his neighbors, 
keeping intact his birthright of belief, and letting his 
worldly affairs shape themselves. Not .so the grandson 
Jacob, the younger of Isaac's twin sons. His faith was an 
energy intensely active — a far-seeing, inventive, tenacious 
venture on whatever promised success in practical life. The 
stories told of him bring this out with w^onderful realism. 
This active faith of his had two directions : toward the 
achievement of worldly success, and toward equally prized 
spiritual values. This combination of material and ideal is 
typified in the double name which he came to bear. From 
being Jacob, the shrewd and unscrupulous '' supplanter " 
(Gen. XXV, 26), in which character he got the better of 
his father, his brother, and his father-in-law, he became in 
course of time Israel, ''God's prevailer " (Gen. xxxii, 28), 
by reason of his eager determination to secure divine favor, 
as is shown in the story of his wrestling with the angel 
(Gen. xxxii, 24-31). In this latter character, and with this 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

new name, the patriarch hved on to a gentle and devout 
old age, the progenitor of the twelve tribes into whose 
family traits and fortunes the Israelite nation was distrib- 
.uted. All this reflects, as in a condensing mirror, the dom- 
inant genius of the Hebrew race. It is the development of 
an obedient faith into an indomitable will, bent on appro- 
priating the blessings of life, material and spiritual. In 
striking accord with this primitive characterization, the 
Hebrew race has been and still is a power to be reckoned 
with both in the progress of civilization and in the evolu- 
tion of a religion for the world. Here in the story of 
Jacob-Israel is seen portrayed, as nowhere else so suc- 
cinctly, its vital dynamic of faith and will. 

Note. It will be remembered that these stories of Abraham and 
Jacob, rising out of the people's self-consciousness as a nation and a 
race, did not assume their present form until centuries of life under 
Jehovah and in contact with the world had determined their racial 
character ; and through these stories the writers interpreted their racial 
traits in masterly terms of individualized personality. It is historical 
conditions reduced to biographical detail. 

In the two directions just mentioned, toward civilization 
and toward religion, we must take note of the peculiar 
A Ti , ^ ^ 2:enius of the Hebrew race. 

As Related o 

to a World I . For its bearing on the progress of civiliza- 

ission ^-^j^^ ^g g^ back to the more primitive Semitic 
stock, of which the Hebrews were a branch, and whose 
mission it was essentially to focus its best qualities into 
a spiritual dynamic ; and compare this with the Aryan or 
Indo-European stock, to which the European and western 
races belong. Each division of mankind had its broad 
and worthy function : the Semitic, endowed with religious 
fervor and insight, to be the pioneers of conscience and 
moral enlightenment ; the Aryan, with its literary and ar- 
tistic gifts, and its genius for practical affairs, to make 
intelligence available in progress and civilization. Both 

[34] 



SEMINA LITTERARUM 

• 

have their periods of world ascendancy ; and the transition 
from Semitic to Aryan begins to be made when Cyrus the 
Medo-Persian conquers the huge empire of Chaldea and 
finds there the Hebrews, a captive people who since the 
far-away time of Abraham have lived through a momentous 
cycle of divine education from Chaldea to Chaldea again, 
and are now ready to take up their appointed mission in 
the new order of civilization. Frop this epoch onward, and 
especially as Biblical literature matures, we can realize with 
increasing clearness the part which the Semitic influence 
was destined to play in the civilizing forces of the world. 

Note. Racial Influences. Our intellectual and moral gains from 
the past are, broadly speaking, the resultant of two great deposits of 
thought and sentiment, the one the gift of the Aryan, the other a 
boon from the Semitic race. To the former we owe, again speaking 
generally, most of our mental and political acquisitions ; to the latter, 
the principal elements of our moral and spiritual heritage. . . . The 
business of civilizing and saving the world, as far as the merely human 
factors are concerned, has been carried on through the transfer of 
moral and spiritual ideas and the arts of civilized life from the one 
race to the other. In nearly everything vital to human well-being the 
Semites were the founders or forerunners. . . . The greatest boon 
which any race or people ever conferred upon humanity, was that of 
religious truth and freedom, and this was the gift of the Hebrews of 
Palestine. Yet not by them as a race has it been or is it now being 
converted to the uses of the world. While the unique national career 
and institutions of Israel fitted that single people to be the deposita- 
ries of saving truth and knowledge, it was the civilizing genius of one 
branch of the Aryan race and the political supremacy of another, which 
prepared the wider and deeper channels through which the divinely 
conferred endowment was conveyed to the kindreds and people of 
mankind. — McCurdy, " History, Prophecy, and the Monuments," 
Vol. I, pp. s-1' 

2. For its bearing on religion, we return from the undif- 
ferentiated Semitic stock, of whose intense genius '' seers, 
martyrs, and fanatics are bred " ^ and three of the leading 

1 G. A. Smith, " Historical Geography of the Holy Land," p. 29. 

[35] 



GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

• 
religions of the world (namely, Judaism, Mohammedanism, 

and Christianity) have come, to the Hebrew branch, to take 
note of its more specific function. Here again we see how 
vitally their energy of faith and will coordinates with the 
distinctive gifts of other "races. They were not eminent in 
art and literature and philosophic thought ; this was the 
gift of the Greeks to the education of humanity. For the 
organization and administration of empire and law and gov- 
ernment we cannot look to them ; this was the gift of the 
Romans. But to this Hebrew race we owe preeminently 
the development of religious insight and conscience to the 
point where it is ready to transcend ethnic or racial bounds 
and become a universal boon for humanity. Thus they 
formed, so to say, one strand in a threefold cord of com- 
prehensive development and culture, supplying the dis- 
tinctively spiritual element. By reason of their unique 
experience and leading, religious ideas were so developed, 
purified, and proportioned to life, that only the culminating 
stage of the Christian interpretation was needed to free 
them from provincial limits and make them universal. No 
other race approaches them in this endowment. It is to 
the Hebrew mind the world owes it that religion is held 
as a vital element of practical and rational living, — that is, 
as a righteous character vitalized by conscience, — as distin- 
guished from a crude magic and superstition, on the one 
side, and a dead mechanical formalism, on the other. And 
the vehicle by which this is conveyed to the world is the 
body of literature which the enlightened world has adopted 
as its Bible. 

Note. The Hebrew Religious Sense. As long as the world lasts, 
all who want to make progress in righteousness will come to Israel for 
inspiration, as to the people who have had the sense for righteous- 
ness most glowing and strongest ; and in hearing and reading the 
words Israel has uttered for us, carers for conduct will find a glow 
and a force they could find nowhere else. — Arnold, "Literature 
and Dogma," p. 50. 

[36] 



SEMINA LITTERARUM 



II 



The Dominant Aptitude. Every nation has its distinctive 
type of liiind, its characteristic approach to things. In its 
contemplation of the world of nature and man and life, that 
attitude to the universe out of which comes its distinctive 
strain of literary utterance, the Hebrew mind may best be 
understood, perhaps, by comparison with the Greek, the 
one other great originative mind of history. 

While the Greek mind was keenly intellectual, apt in 
abstract thinking and reasoning, the Hebrew mind was 
intense, concrete, realistic. To the Greek, truth presented 
itself in principles, laws, logical deductions ; to the Hebrew 
in analogies, intuitions, descriptive imagery. We may in 
part name these dominant aptitudes by saying the Greek 
was a born philosopher, the Hebrew an alert observer. 
From the Greek cast of mind comes abstract and systematic 
thinking; from the Hebrew cast of mind, keen observation 
and intuitive insight. St. Paul has touched upon this dis- 
tinction in his remark that the Jews look for a sign, while 
the Greeks seek after wisdom ; by which he means that 
while the Greeks project their own intellectual powers on- 
ward to solve the problem of being in human terms, the 
Hebrews begin with belief in the divine, the personal 
Source of all life, and interpret facts and events as tokens 
of His working. Hence their tendency to invest everything 
they see and experience with spiritual values, to explore life 
in terms of personal worth and conduct. 

The bearing of this aptitude of mind on their distinctive 
gift in literature may be expressed in a quotation from 
Bearing on Professor S. H. Butchcr. "While philosophy," 
Literature j^g says, '' had for the Jews no meaning, history 
had a deeper significance than it bore to any other people. 
It was the chief factor in their national unity, the source 
from which they drew ethical and spiritual enlightenment. 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

Thither they turned as to hving oracles inscribed with the 
finger of the Almighty. To history they appealed as the 
supreme tribunal of God's justice." ^ 

Accordingly we see that the whole body of the Hebrew 
literature, as we have it in the Bible, is closely interwoven 
with history : history read as luminous with the presence 
of God, and therefore sensed in its inner meanings, rather 
than in dead annals and chronicles. Their laws, when 
compiled and codified, are set in a framework of history. 
Their poetry and didactics are associated with historic 
names and personages. Their prophecy rises and flour- 
ishes as the larger outlooks of history call for it, interpret- 
ing by vital principles the history that is current and the 
historical crises that are impending. It is in the concrete 
events that pass before their eyes, or are remembered from 
their past, that they trace the direct working of Jehovah 
and the signs of His will and purpose for the future. 

Inhering with this Hebrew sense for the inner meanings 
of history, a phase of it indeed, is the fact that the whole 
trend of their literature is prophetic. They showed their 
sense of this in making up their canon by calling the whole 
line of historians from Joshua to 2 Kings '' the former 
prophets." They were schooled to the consciousness that 
they were a divinely chosen people, a people with a high 
destiny, toward which the events of their history were 
being shaped according to the purpose of Jehovah. Hence 
prophecy, as a constant and organic element of history, 
has greater power, range, depth, and significance for the 
Hebrews than for any other people. The Hebrew mind 
is peculiarly susceptible to it, and thinks in its large terms. 
Accordingly, one of the most remarkable phenomena of the 
world's literature is H^ebrew prophecy ; it is the supreme 
literary product of this gifted race's genius. 

^ Butcher, " Harvard Lectures on Greek Subjects," p. 29. 

[38I 



SEMINA LITTERARUM 

Notes, i. The Historical Consciousness of the Hebrews. The 
sum of book-learning was small ; men of all ranks mingled with that 
Oriental freedom which is so foreign to our habits ; shrewd observa- 
tion, a memory retentive of traditional lore, and the faculty of original 
reflection took the place of laborious study as the ground of acknowl- 
edged intellectual pre-eminence. — Smith, " The Prophets of Israel," 
p. 126. • 

Everything that befell Israel was interpreted by the prophets as 
a work of Jehovah's hand, displaying His character and will — not an 
arbitrary character or a changeable <will, but a fixed and consistent holy 
purpose, which has Israel for its object and seeks the true felicity of 
the nation, but at the same time is absolutely sovereign over Israel, 
and will not give way to Israel's desires or adapt itself to Israel's 
convenience. — Smith, ''The Prophets of Israel," p. 70. 

2. The N'ature of Prophecy. Of course by prophecy is meant 
something broader and more rational than mere prediction of events ; 
it is a spiritual presage based on a grounded interpretation of present 
conditions and tendencies. McCurdy thus defines it with primary refer- 
ence to the Second Isaiah : " He did not, strictly speaking, foresee 
events ; he saw conditions. Prediction is essentially a view of details, 
while the spiritual element in prophecy has primarily not to do with 
results, but with factors and principles and their divinely constituted 
inner relations." — McCurdy, " History, Prophecy, and the Monu- 
ments," Vol. Ill, p. 424. 



II. The Hebrew Heritage 

A race's heritage, what it derives by bequest or endow- 
ment from its ancestral past, must be construed' Uberally. 
Not lands and property alone, not such wealth as the 
nation's industries have accumulated, but its inheritance 
of ideas, and working energies, must be included. The 
Hebrew heritage, in this comprehensive sense, as the 
prophets and historians came to interpret it, was something 
quite unique in racial experience, and contained the germs 
of the nation's peculiar mission. Some salient factors of 
it must here be noted for their bearing on the development 
of their literature. 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

Although so alert to respond to the inner meanings of 
events, it is not to be expected that the Hebrew people 
From what should come into their historical self-consciousness 
Point Esti- at oncc, or quickly. It is not until long after 
"^^ ® events occur that their bearings and import can 

become clear. The histories that we have in the opening 
books of the Bible, from Genesis to Joshua, could not well 
have assumed their final form until Israel had come into 
possession of its land and developed its national and or- 
ganic principle to the point where it could act and be acted 
upon among the peoples of the earth. Then their men of 
insight could see and understand the way in which they 
had been led, and the direction in which their experience 
pointed. Before that, while the people were slowly emerg- 
ing from primitive conditions to an organized monarchy, 
their literary utterances would naturally be concerned with 
affairs too immediate and limited to have permanent Bibli- 
cal value, except as here and there some song or story had 
the larger touch which, fitted it to survive its time. From 
these scanty remainders of contemporary literature we must 
choose some work from which as a landmark we can reckon 
both backwards and forwards : backward toward the tradi- 
tions that the people have in store ; forward toward the 
destiny that is beginning to dawn upon their minds. 

Fortunately such a landmark exists, whose authenticity 
as a work contemporary with its event is not seriously 
questioned, and which scholars praise as '' one of the most 
ancient and magnificent remains of early Hebrew litera- 
ture." ^ It has already been mentioned as our starting 
point : 2 the Song of Deborah, in Judges v. It is a song 
of victory, commemorating the wonderful deliverance of 
Israel from a twenty years' oppression under Jabin King 
of Canaan ; and a song of praise to Jehovah, who had 

1 Oesterly, in Hastings' *' Biblical Dictionary " (one-volume edition). 

2 See above, p. 5. 

[40] 



SEMINA LITTERARUM 

inspired that cooperation of the tribes which under Him 
had made the victory possible. The song dates from about 
a century after the IsraeUtes had effected entrance into the 
promised land, while they were struggling to obtain a stable 
foothold and independence therein, and while the memory 
of their deliverance from Egypt had still the vigor of a 
motive power among the scattered tribes. 

Note. The Significance of Deborah's Song. The Hebrew tribes 
were scattered in little communities over the land of Canaan, both 
east and west of the Jordan; and as the song recognizes they had 
their various local interests. But Deborah assumes that they may all 
be appealed to on the ground of a common tribal unity and a common 
loyalty to Jehovah. It is the thought of their God Jehovah, and of 
their obligation to come to His help against the mighty (cf . vs. 23), which 
makes a ground of appeal for all the tribes. Jehovah has come to fight 
for them from His residence in the Sinai region (vss. 4, 5) ; the loyal 
tribes have come from their scattered homes to the plain of Esdraelon ; 
Deborah herself, coming from far in the hill-country of Ephraim, has 
stirred up Barak in his northern home to throw himself into the common 
cause ; and all, fighting shoulder to shoulder, are sure that their enemies 
are the enemies of Jehovah (cf. vs. 31); they see by the event also that 
Jehovah has been in the batde, too, by bringing the powers of nature 
to their aid (vss. 20, 21). The song recognizes the danger that the 
tribes had been in. of losing national identity by choosing new gods 
(vs. 8 ; cf . Deut. xxxii, 1 7), and of being absorbed in their own clan- 
nish affairs as were some of the tribes (vss. 15-17); and the fact that 
a remnant (vs. 13) came down and risked their lives for independence 
is the reassuring motive of the song : 

For that the leaders took the lead in Israel., 
For that the people offered themselves willingly, 
Bless ye Jehovah." 

An author " implies an audience ; a song reveals the 
mental and emotional key both of singer and of hearers. 
Let us take occasion of this glimpse into contemporary 
conditions to inquire what fund of idea and sentiment the 
people had inherited from their past, and what hopes for 
their corporate future. We may note the contents of this 
heritage under two heads. 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 



The Allotted Land. It was for foothold and security in 
the land of Canaan that the Hebrews were fighting ; it was 
for victory over a people that had colonized the land before 
them that Deborah sang her praise to Jehovah. They had 
not really inherited the land. Their ancestor Abraham had 
owned only a burial place therein (Gen. xxiii ; cf. Acts vii, 
5) ; and the other patriarchs had roamed at will over com- 
mon pasture lands, without building or buying (cf. Heb. xi, 
9, 13). Thus the land was an allotment, not an inherit- 
ance ; and what they inherited was a traditional claim to it, 
which they traced to a promise made by Jehovah to Abra- 
ham (Exod. vi, 8 ; xxxiii, 1-3). Their right to it was after 
all the right of conquest, like any invasion ; but it contained 
the germ of a new and till then unknown motive. Their 
invasion was not predatory, like a Bedouin raid ; not a grasp- 
ing for power and aggrandizement, like the later Assyrian 
campaigns. Their motive was peaceful, as befitted a race 
of herdsmen and small farmers ; but it was vitalized also 
with the faith of their ancestor Abraham, which gave, a reli- 
gious value to the land where he had lived and died. It was 
theirs, because his faith in Jehovah's promise was theirs. 

Note. The Promise to Abraham. For the successive -stages of the 
covenant by which the land was promised to Abraham and his posterity, 
see Gen. xii, 1-3 ; xiii, 14-17 ; xv, 5-14; xxii, 15-18. These of course 
are described in the form taken by the later finished history ; but the 
tradition of the promise was rooted in the primitive tribal consciousness. 
For the vitality of this tradition in Hebrew poetry, see Psa. cv, 8-12. 

The Israelite's ardent attachment to his land is shown in 
the innumerable passages where its scenery, its weather, its 
products, its occupations are dwelt upon ; but beyond this, 
too, it was to him a mirror of the great men and great deeds 
of history. The patriarchal age, between which and his own 
a chasm intervened, was kept vividly in mind by the altars 

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SEMINA LITTERARUM 

erected at places where the patriarchs had dwelt, — Hebron, 
Mamre, Beersheba, Bethel, Shechem ; all of which places 
had their ancient stories and prophetic suggestions. No 
other nation has more truly heeded the spirit expressed in 
Tennyson's poem : 

Love thou thy land, with love far-brought 
From out the storied Past, and used 
Within the Present, but transfused 
Thro' future time by power of thought. 

In a true sense their land was to them like a book, in which 
they read histories and prophecies full of present uses. We 
may note its meanings in two aspects. 

The favorite Biblical description of Palestine calls it '' a 
land flowing with milk and honey " ; this, however, is the 
As a School language of enthusiasm. A more discriminating 
of Character account of it is ascribed to Moses in the Book 
of Deuteronomy, where, before the Israelites enter it, he 
contrasts it with the land they have left. '' For," he says, 
" the land, whither thou goest in to possess it, is not as 
the land of Egypt, from whence ye came out, where thou 
sowedst thy seed, and wateredst it with thy foot, as a garden 
of herbs ; but the land, whither ye go over to possess it, is 
a land of hills and valleys, and drinketh water of the rain 
of heaven, a land which Jehovah thy God careth for : the 
eyes of Jehovah thy God are always upon it, from the be- 
ginning of the year even unto the end of the year." ^ This 
description distinguishes between a land which needs little 
outlay of labor and a land which requires strenuous care 
and attention. Of this latter sort was the land of Canaan. 
It had great diversities of landscape, elevation, soil and 
climate ; great fertility, too, under proper cultivation ; but it 
demanded unremitting diligence and industry on the part 
of the possessor, and ceaseless vigilance against marauders 

1 Deut. xi, 10-12. 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

and wild beasts ; was much exposed also to blights, plagues 
of insects, and ravages of storm and drought. The effort 
to meet such conditions, and to subdue the land to their 
use, would call forth in the Israelites many of the most 
sterling elements of character : steadiness, alertness, devoted- 
ness, persistence, patience, - — virtues which under the gen- 
eral term meekness are said to inherit the land (cf. Psa. 
xxxvii, II ; Matt, v, 5). Such resolute traits as these, off- 
setting and supplementing their native intensity of faith and 
will, were well fitted to develop the strong character needed 
for the evolution of a world purpose ; and this land was the 
divinely allotted school for it. 

It is worth while to note, in view of what later came of 
it, the seemingly designed fitness of this ''least of all lands" 
A the Thea- ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ Were the laboratory for the shaping 
ter of a Great of an eternal idea ; the theater for the evolution 
Design q£ ^ history and a literature which should be for 

the enlightening and ennobling of all mankind. 

We have already mentioned its central location, at the 
eastern end of the Mediterranean Sea, and as nearly as 
may be at the meeting place of the three great continents 
Asia, Africa, and Europe. As for its connections by sea, 
it is comparatively isolated from other lands, owing to the 
lack of good harbors on its coast. As to its land connec- 
tions, it may be regarded as virtually an oasis between two 
stretches of desert ; beyond which latter were situated, in 
Bible times, the two great centers of ancient culture and 
civilization. These were : Egypt, across the Sinaitic penin- 
sula to the southwest ; and Chaldea, with its daughter 
smonarchy Assyria, in the Tigris and Euphrates region, be- 
yond the great Syrian desert to the east. This intermediate 
land of Palestine, then, was the bridge of communication 
between these world centers ; across which lay the interna- 
tional routes of travel, traffic, and war. The caravan roads 
from Egypt and Ethiopia, passing up the western coast 

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SEMINA LITTERARUM 

from Gaza around the headland of Carmel, crossed the 
plain of Esdraelon, where Deborah's song of victory was 
sung, and then, rounding the northern end of the Sea of 
Galilee, stretched onward past Mount Hermon to Damascus, 
and still onward to Mesopotamia. Thus Palestine, though 
so sequestered, and in size too insignificant to be of impor- 
tance among the leading nations, was yet in the very midst 
of the energies and activities of the ancient world, and felt 
the pulsation of all its movements. 

It was not in the nature of the Hebrews to remain indif- 
ferent spectators of the movements of things around them. 
With their native genius for reading the signs of the times 
in events, their prophets and historians were keen critics 
of their neighbors, and curious observers of the course of 
empire. This aptitude finds much expression in their 
literature. Their historians trace their kinship with the 
nations round them, — Edom, Moab, Ammon, Ishmael, 
Syria. Their prophets have oracles not only for their own 
people but for their neighbor nations, — as one can read 
in Amos, Isaiah, Nahum, Obadiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel. 
Along with their own national experience they acquire a 
sense that -their land is destined to be a tenter of light 
and guidance for other nations as well (cf. Isa. ii, 2-4 ; 
Ix, 1-5) ; and that however the Hebrews may be dispersed 
among the nations, yet their capital and mother city is here, 
and they retain the customs and religion learned here. 
In other words, from this centrally located land there was 
destined to go forth, through its literature and its developed 
character, a leavening and penetrative influence into all the 
world. And from the beginning of their residence there 
the minds of their prophets and leaders were keyed to the 
idea that God had placed them there in the working out of 
some momentous design. 



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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

II 

The Inherited Fund of Ideas. When Deborah sang of 
tribal cooperation and divine aid, she shaped her ode in 
conformity with ideas that had come in with her race's birth 
and grown with its growth. Her hearers had a fund of vital 
conceptions and sentiments on which she and all the leaders 
of Israel after her could draw, and to which they could 
appeal. This was their real heritage ; more truly than the 
land, which was their culture-field, or than their prosperity 
and freedom, which were but adjuncts of their national suc- 
cess. It was their unique fund of ideas, inherited from long 
generations, which laid the foundation for their later power 
in the world. 

We are not concerned here to trace the ideas which they 
had in common with the great Semitic stock from which 
they were derived. These will come up for consideration 
later.i Their forms of worship were like those of the com- 
munities around them ; which communities themselves were 
Semitic, inheriting much from a common source. The racial 
faith and temperament inherited from the patriarchs has 
already been noted — not so much an idea as a subconscious 
nature and temperament. Nor are we concerned with heredi- 
tary customs, many of them crude and barbaric, which they 
will naturally outgrow or refine as they advance to higher 
grades of civilization. We are to take note rather of certain 
ideas which differentiate the Israelite people from others ; 
ideas which, being comparatively recent, have the vigor and 
vitality of newness still upon them. We may regard these 
as the formative principles of the nation's thought and 
religion and literature. 

It will be remembered that with this Song of Deborah 
we are striking into the history of these Israelites when 
they have been only about a century released from an era 

1 See Chapter III, Looking Before and After. 

[46] 



SEMINA LITTERARUM 

of Egyptian bondage. It was to that wonderful deliverance, 
with its attendant circumstances and revelations, that they 
traced their beginning as a nation. Before that their unit 
of corporate life had been that of the family, derived from 
the primitive conditions of the patriarchs. On their way 
from Egypt to Canaan, however, a transition which took 
a full generation of wilderness training, new ideas must be 
instilled into their minds, and emphasized by momentous 
events, to fit them for the freedom and development that 
awaited them. These we gather from the history recounted 
in the books of Exodus and Numbers. Three of the main 
fundamental ideas, all derived from concrete historical events, 
we will consider. , 

While the Hebrews were still in Egypt, sunk in apathy 
and spirit-broken by oppression, Moses, one of their kins- 
I. The God ^n^^ of the tribe of Levi, who by a strange 
Who Is providence had obtained a thorough education 

(cf. Acts vii, 22) but then had been for forty years an 
outlaw in the land of Midian, received from God a com- 
mission to return and, putting himself at their head, lead 
them to the land promised to their fathers. It was a com- 
mission to be the founder and lawgiver of a nation, the 
pioneer in a new historical movement. According to the 
ideas of his time each nation or community was known by 
the name of its tutelar deity ; it was natural therefore that 
Moses' first inquiry would be for the name of the God 
who thus commissioned him, that he might, report it to his 
people. The divine answer assured him that this was no 
new or unfamiliar God but the one whom they and their 
fathers had always worshiped (Exod. iii, i6). The name, 
however, was new to them, and had a meaning which they 
could appropriate to their needs and ideals as citizens of 
a new commonwealth. 

This revealing of a new name for God was like taking a 
conception of deity which had always been a kind of half 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

real abstraction and making it individual and concrete. The 
name by which the patriarchs had worshiped their deity was 
El Shaddai (Exod. vi, 3), which we translate '' God Al- 
mighty"; the word for God, ''El," which still survives in the 
Mohammedan name ''Allah," meaning "might" or "power." 
In the scripture it is oftenest used in the plural, " Elohim," 
as if one should say " The Powers," but construed with a 
singular verb. He was conceived, it would seem, as an un- 
differentiated power in nature and events, but with no clear 
idea of moral character or of personal relation. Such a God 
could indeed have become well-nigh lost to the enslaved Isra- 
elites in the multitude of local and natural deities of which 
Egypt was full. The new n^.e, vouchsafed at Moses' re- 
quest, was first given ' not as a name but as a meaning, from 
which the name should be coined. " And God said unto 
Moses, I AM THAT I AM ; and He said. Thus shalt thou say 
unto the children of Israel, I am hath sent me unto you " 
(Exod. iii, 14). This was merely putting into the first per- 
son ('Eh'yeh) what they were to express and understand in 
the third. The name was "Yahweh," or "Jehovah" (riLT), 
and in its comprehensive meaning was to be understood as 
" He who is," or " The God who is." 

This name plays so commanding a part in the whole 
experience and literature of the Israelites that a further con- 
sideration of it' is here in place. It is a peculiarity of the 
Hebrew verb that it has no present tense, in our feeling of 
the term. Its two tenses are past and future ; and this 
name, being in the future, signifies more nearly " He who 
will be " than " He who is." But even the Hebrew past and 
future tenses are not like ours. Instead of denoting simply 
time, they denote rather completed action (or state) and con- 
tinuous action. We come still nearer to the meaning of this 
name, then, by understanding it " He who is being," " He 
who eternally is." Matthew Arnold's designation, " The Eter- 
nal," does not give quite the main emphasis of the term ; 

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SEMINA LITTERARUM 

it may perhaps best be represented in modern phrase as 
"He who really is," or "The God Reality," — the Being 
.who is and will be, as distinguished from some Power 
which seems to be, or which can be changed, or which is 
conjectured to be. The verb is left unpredicated. What 
He will eternally be it is for men's experience to find out : 
all that they need — guide, protector, defender, friend; or, 
if they are disloyal and false — judge, correcter, chastiser. 
And the more sincerely personal their felt relation to Him, 
the more real will He be to them. It is as if the loftiest 
theme of their literature and thinking were condensed into a 
word, whose depth and breadth of meaning are inexhaustible. 
The Israelites' primal relation to this newly named God 
is very simple. When Moses receives the name and the 
duty they do not yet know Him, and they are not arbitrarily 
commanded or comp*elled to serve Him. He invites them 
rather to take Him on trust, and make the venture for free- 
dom in reliance on His promise. The token by which they 
will know that their deliverer is indeed Jehovah is that later 
they will serve Him on that same mountain where He is 
now talking with Moses (Exod. iii, 12). Thus from the out- 
set of their struggle for home and independence they are 
in the conscious attitude of a nation continually realizing 
and verifying a promise, discovering through experience 
the reality of their national Deity. 

Notes, i. Written and Oral Use of the Name. It will be noted 
that in the Authorized and English Revised versions of the Bible the 
name " Jehovah " occurs but seldom, while in the American Revised it 
occurs very frequently ; and that wherever it occurs in the American 
Revised the other versions have the title Lord printed in capitals. It is 
also asserted by scholars that " Jehovah " is not the right spelling of the 
name, but " Jahveh," or rather " Yahveh." These variations rise from 
the curious history connected with the name. The Hebrew alphabet, 
it must be premised, consists only of consonants, and until long after 
the language had ceased to be a living one the name was written in 
the four consonants YHVH. In the later writing of the language vowel 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

signs were added to the words above and below the line ; but as the 
Hebrews, from excess of reverence, never pronounced the name of 
their Deity, the true pronunciation had become lost. When in reading 
they came to the name they substituted for it the title " Lord " (Hebrew 
** Adonai ") ; and it was the vowels of this title that were added to the 
four consonants YHVH, making the name " YeHoVaH." The Author- 
ized version has retained the title Lord, while the American Revised has 
adopted the name "Jehovah," but with the vowels belonging to "Adonai." 

2. The Name Attributed Earlier. In the J account of the early 
patriarchal times the name "Jehovah," or "Jehovah Elohim," is used 
in connection with events much earlier than this revelation of the name 
to Moses ; this because in the naive idea of this popular source no time 
is contemplated when Jehovah was not the God of the Hebrews and 
of all mankind. For a similar though somewhat more dogmatic reason 
the P source, in Gen. iv, 26, dates the beginning of Jehovah worship 
in the days of Enosh the grandson of Adam. 

3. The Name in Natio7ial Use. After the kingdoms of Judah and 
Israel are established, the name of the national Deity is compounded 
with other words in the names given to kings and prophets. A short- 
ened form " Jah " (cf. Exod. xv, 2, Psa. Ixviii, 4, margin) is generally 
employed in composition, especially at the end of a name. The com- 
pound with the divine name may be recognized, wherever it occurs, by 
the prefix Jo or Jeho (for example, Joram, Jehoshaphat), or by the final 
jah or iah (for example, Elijah, Isaiah, Hezekiah, Jeremiah). The word 
" Hallelujah," which occurs many times in the later psalms, is a liturgical 
compound meaning " Praise ye Jehovah." The name is also joined with 
other names to mark momentous junctures in history ; for example, 
Jehovah-jireh, Gen. xxii, 14; Jehovah-nissi, Exod. xvii, 15; Jehovah- 
shalom, Jud. vi, 24. 

The natural tendency of nations, as has been remarked by 
historians, is to glorify their beginnings. No nation would 

„, willingly own to a primal state of slavery unless 

Verifying it were undeniably so. It is characteristic of the 
Deliverance f^g^rews, however, that the birth of their nation, 
the initial event of which they were proud, is identified with 
a great deliverance from bondage, a deliverance which in 
themselves they were powerless to effect, and which was 
rendered hard and thankless by their unfaith and rebellion. 
Thus the idea which they had inherited, and which was 

[5°] 



SEMINA LITTERARUM 

fostered as a motive by their prophets, was that not their valor 
or power or desert had made them a nation, but the loving- 
kindness of Jehovah, who had chosen them to be a peculiar 
people with a unique mission and destiny among the nations. 

This deliverance from Egypt was the direct verification 
of Jehovah's promise. He had through Moses summoned 
them to take Him, the God with the new name, as it were 
on trial ; and as they took Him at His word and made their 
dash for freedom, naturally they were alert to discover signs 
that He was with them and for them. 

Their first identification of their new God, was at the Red 
Sea, where, seemingly entrapped, with "' the foe behind and 
the deep before," they made a marvelous escape through 
the bed of the sea, which a strong wind had laid bare, 
and then, wind and tide shifting, saw their pursuers over- 
whelmed and drowned. In the story of this deliverance is 
preserved a magnificent song of thanksgiving (Exod. xv, 
i-i8), of which the nucleus at least is contemporary with 
the event. It was sung antiphonally by male and female 
choirs, Miriam the sister of Aaron leading the women 
with timbrels and dances (Exod. xv, i, 20). It expresses, 
largely in fervid description, their realization of the stupen- 
dous event, and their sense of having found a God and 
Deliverer whom they could name and know. 

I will sing unto Jehovah, for he hath triumphed gloriously; 

The horse and his rider hath he thrown into the sea. 

Jehovah is my strength and song, 

And he is become my salvation ; 

This is my God, and I will praise him ; 

My father's God, and I will exalt him. 

It is noteworthy that with this first identification of their 
deliverer they form a corresponding idea of his nature : 

Jehovah is a man of war : 
Jehovah is his name. 

It is their first clear identification of God with experience. 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

This fact of deliverance by the direct action of divine 
power became from this time the fundamental idea of the 
Israelite people ; an idea which, under the name of salva- 
tion, took on a more spiritual sense as their experience 
became more inward. They not only dated their nation's 
beginning from it, but had constant recourse to it in times 
of trial or extremity. The Book of Judges, for instance, is* 
all written to give numerous cases wherein Jehovah, while 
a . stable government was gradually being formed, rescued 
the people through the agency of champions from the help- 
less condition into which they had fallen. In this initial 
deliverance at the Red Sea the people had no active part ; 
they had only to '' stand still and see the salvation of 
Jehovah " (Exod. xiv, 13). As time went on, however, they 
learned to associate His work more intimately with their 
own endeavors. In Deborah's song, for instance. He is 
recognized as having come up from His home in Sinai 
when the Israelites are hard pressed in battle, to sweep 
away their foes by the storm and the flooded river Kishon 
(Judg. V, 20, 21); but it is to deliver a people who have 
already come " to the help of Jehovah against the mighty" 
(Judg. V, 23). So gradually their experience teaches them 
that in this matter of deliverance the human is to cooperate 
with the divine ; but for a long period their successes are 
brought about in a way that verifies the power of Jehovah 
as the real Deliverer. A typical instance of this is the case 
of Gideon, who wrought a signal deliverance from the Midi- 
anites by a clever stratagem, but not until, by Jehovah's 
command, he had reduced his army from thirty-two thou- 
sand to three hundred, "lest Israel vaunt themselves against 
me, saying, ' Mine own hand hath saved me ' " (Judg. vii, 2). 

With the refining idea of deliverance, from an external 
rescue to an inner salvation, came a more rational idea 
of the means by which God made Himself known. First 
identifying Him, as in the songs of Miriam and Deborah, 

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SEMINA LITTERARUM 

with the violent and exceptional phenomena of nature, — 
storm and lightning and earthquake, forces made to destroy, 
— it is by slow experience that they learn to associate Him 
first with beneficent forces of sunshine and rain, and later 
with the inner life of men. It is a gradual growth in the 
verification of God's working from material to spiritual. It 
may be illustrated by an incident in the life of the prophet 
Elijah, whose idea of verifying Jehovah's reality to Israel 
was by means of famine and miracle. In a* time of reaction 
and doubt, when all his work seemed to have been in 
vain (i Kings xix), the prophet went to find Jehovah at 
His ancient dwelling place in Horeb, and there learned that 
neither wind nor earthquake nor fire is the real manifesta- 
tion of the divine to man, but ''a still small voice," speak- 
ing as it were within the soul (i Kings xix, 12). This 
incident may serve as a kind of landmark in the progres- 
sive refinement of the idea which lay at the basis of their 
religious life. It enabled them to verify the word and 
continued power of their Deliverer in terms not merely of 
nature and war but of the inner life of manhood. 

The series of events by which the Israelites were trans- 
formed from a race enslaved and spirit-broken to a people 

»,. __ conscious of a unity and coordination of interests 

3. The Mu- ^ 

tuai Relation culminates in a covenant, or compact, made at 
by Covenant ^Q^nt Sinai, after the people had found by a 
considerable experience that Jehovah was keeping His word. 
As they inherited the tradition of it, this compact was -solem- 
nized by portentous natural phenomena on the sacred moun- 
tain (Exod. xix, 16-20) ; while to Moses, who was called to 
the top of the mountain, were given two tablets of stone, 
on which were engraved the ten ''words," or fundamental 
commands of the law (Exod. xx), and, as it was believed, 
certain oral instructions constituting a primitive code for a 
people in their state and situation (Exod. xxi-xxiii). The 
chapters which contain this oldest stratum of the law are 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

called the Book of the Covenant (Exod. xxiv, 7). To this 
covenant the people agreed at Sinai, soon after their escape 
from Egypt. Again at Shechem, when the possession of 
the land was assured to them, they solemnly renewed their 
covenant of loyalty to Jehovah, and their promise to serve 
no other god (Josh, xxiv, 19-25). 

Such was the Jsraelites' conscious idea of the origin of 
their religion and their corporate life. It differs from that 
of other nations in being so realistic ; and merits attention 
for the unique relation it recognizes between the human 
and the divine — a relation in which inheres the vitality 
of their religion, as compared with other religions of the 
world. All nations had a sense of an unseen power or 
powers controlling the affairs of nature and man ; it is a 
sense native to humanity. The great effort of the ages has 
been to establish rational and intelligent communication 
with that Power. If it is sensed as merely an unknown 
and arbitrary Autocracy in nature, the varieties and contrasts 
of natural phenomena suggest polytheism, a multitude of 
discordant powers. Imagination conceives of these under 
natural forms — suns and stars, gods of thunder and storm 
and earthquake, or beasts of prey and burden ; and the con- 
ception of the unseen has little if any moral content. It is 
naturally regarded accordingly as a power not to be loved 
but used for human purposes ; and the way to secure his 
good will is either to bribe him by costly offerings and pre- 
scribed rites, or, in cases of doubt, by some occult means 
of divination and magic. All worship is thus rendered 
doubtful and tentative, and all service either an unchosen 
slavery or a capricious opportunism. 

The Israelites were the one nation of antiquity to depart 
radically from this idolatrous idea. This they did by taking 
their experience as revealing a personal Being, with a mind 
and will like their own, and after preliminary trial of His 
good will by making a solemn compact or covenant with Him. 

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SEMINA LITTERARUM 

In a compact the two parties stand on common and in a 
sense equal ground. Both are doing what they see is good, 
and what they freely agree to do ; both, for the sake of 
certain desirable objects, bind themselves to certain duties 
and obligations. The simple terms of the Israelites' com- 
pact were so well known to all, that prophets and leaders 
could appeal to them as a matter of loyalty and conscience. 
By it Jehovah promises to carry out the deliverance of 
which He has already given a foretaste and sample : to be 
their Guide, Defender, Saviour, Judge. On their part they 
bind themselves to have Him alone as their God, discarding 
all others ; to learn His nature, and to obey His will both 
in worship of Him and in conduct toward one another. 

The solemn instrument or document of this compact is 
embodied in what is called the Ten Words, first given in 
Exodus XX, and later repeated in Deuteronomy v. This, 
perhaps the oldest and most familiar portion of their litera- 
ture, condenses their law of living to a nucleus of ten rules, 
so primitively ordered (if primitive minds are addressed) 
that they can be remembered by counting on the ten fin- 
gers ; and yet so far-reaching and comprehensive that to 
the end of their history priest and magistrate and prophet 
can use them as a final appeal. 

Note. As we have the Ten Commandments in Exodus and 
Deuteronomy, some of them have clauses of explanation and ampli- 
fication appended to them ; but in their original form they were more 
nearly a literal ". ten words " code, being capable of expression nearly 
in single Hebrew words with the negative lo'' prefixed (in all but two, 
for they are mostly taboos or prohibitions). It is not improbable that 
in their present form they represent a considerable history of gradual 
finish and perhaps selection. 

Of the racial and religious ideas which the Israelites in- 
herited, we have mentioned only the salient ones, the ideas 
to which their leaders could appeal and which all their lit- 
erature could presuppose. By the thought of the land given 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

to their fathers and restored to them as the theater of a 
divine purpose, they were pledged to unity, patriotism, pride 
Summary of ^^ making the land desirable in the eyes of na- 
israei's Fund tions. By the thought of a God who had revealed 
Himself in a prophetic name and a momentous 
deliverance, they were pledged to acknowledge Him in the 
experiences of life, and in whatever He sent of blessing or 
warning. By the remembered covenant, the distinctive con- 
stitution of their corporate life, they were pledged to their 
part of it, to reverence and be true to it, as experience made 
it fitting. These ideas are vital in all their literature. They 
are appealed to and enforced by all the poets and prophets. 
And we begin the study of that literature just as these 
formative ideas are in the vigor of their prime. 

III. Before the Age of Books 

For the beginnings of Biblical literature we have to go 
back far beyond the age of written books or scholarly learn- 
ing to an age when ideas were conveyed orally and per- 
petuated in memory. We are to think of times not unlike 
those in the history of English literature from which we 
get our store of popular ballads. These ballads had circu- 
lated in the people's memory for a long time before it 
occurred to scholars and antiquarians to reduce them to 
writing. So with the earliest examples that we have of 
Biblical literature. They spring from the experiences of 
a people unlettered, in the book sense, but not unliterary. 
They merely assume a form adapted to oral transmission ; 
and they undergo a molding process in the people's mem- 
ory, subject to changes and refinements of wording until 
they become stereotyped and permanent. Thus they be- 
come literature, with a form and artistry of its own ; an 
artistry adapted rather to the ear and the memory than to 
the eye and the library. 

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All the earlier literature of the Bible, down to the end 
of David's reign, abounds in evidences of this oral origin, 
molding, and transmission. In fact the personal word, 
spoken or chanted, was the norm of literary discourse, 
which the later written productions never lost. Of the 
form of such personal utterance it is essential that it be 
vividly realized, easily grasped, and retainable unchanged 
in memory. These are not book qualities, formal and aca- 
demic ; they, are the limpid qualities of speech and story 
and song, addressed to the minds not merely of scholars 
but of common people. 

Notes, i. The Commo7i Folk Basis of Literature. In accounting 
for the origin of English ballad poetry Professor Kittredge (" English 
and Scottish Popular Ballads," Introd., p. xix) describes conditions of 
life very similar to what we may attribute to the Hebrews in their 
various experiences of communal life : " ' Folk ' is a large word. It 
suggests a whole nation, or at all events a huge concourse of people. 
Let us abandon it, then, for the moment, and think rather of a small 
tribal gathering, assembled, in very early times, or — what for the 
anthropologist amounts to the same thing — under very simple condi- 
tions of life, for the purpose of celebrating some occasion of common 
interest, — a successful hunt, or the return from a prosperous foray, or 
the repulse of a band of marauding strangers. The object of the meet- 
ing is known to all ; the deeds which are to be sung, the dance which 
is to accompany and illustrate the singing, are likewise familiar to every 
one. There is no such diversity of intellectual interests as characterizes 
even the smallest company of civilized men. There is unity of feeling 
and a common stock, however slender, of ideas and traditions. The 
dancing and singing, in which all share, are so closely related as to be 
practically complementary parts of a single festal act. Here, now, we 
have the ' folk ' of our discussion, reduced, as it were, to its lowest 
terms, — a singing, dancing throng subjected as a unit to a niental 
and emotional stimulus which is not only favorable to the production 
of poetry, but is almost certain to result in such production." 

2. Tra7is7nissio7i by Me7Jio7y. How literature in poetic form made 
its way among the Arabs before the age of books is described by Pro- 
fessor A. B. Davidson, " Biblical and Literary Essays," pp. 264, 265 : 
" No poems were written before Islam. But, once shot from the poet's 
mouth, they flew across the desert faster than arrows. The maidens 

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sang them as they went, with their pitchers on their shoulders, to the 
well. The camel driver cheered himself and his weary beasts with 
them, as they wended their way over the monotonous sands under the 
bright Pleiades. . . . Before Islam, writing seems to have been little 
practised. Poems were written on the hearts of the people. Their brev- 
ity made this easy, their sententiousness, their proverb-like character, 
their succession of brilliant images, each like a rich pearl, and the whole, 
as the Arabs are never weary of saying, like a string of pearls." 

In considering the primitive literature before the age of 
books, we need to note how much of it remains to us in 
primitive form, what native hterary types it reveals, and 
what are its limitations as a vehicle for Biblical truth. 



Literary Fragments and Remainders. In the first eight 
books of the Hebrew Bible, which narrate the history of 
Israel to the end of the reign of David, ^ there are a good 
many quoted passages, mostly of poetry, which are evidently 
more ancient than the text in which they occur. The source 
from which some of these are derived is named ; indicating 
that collections of such fugitive pieces were made before 
the history was written, and that these were drawn upon as 
sources or illustrations of the written history itself. 

The twenty-first chapter of Numbers contains three such 
quotations; and the first of these, verses 14, 15, is referred 
to a book now lost, called '' The Book of the Wars of 
Jehovah." It reads like little more than a collection of 
local names, and perhaps preserves in poetic form the 
determination of a boundary. '' Perhaps," says Professor 
Geden, '' we are to understand that the Song of the Well 
also (vss. 17, 18), and the Ode of Triumph over Heshbon 

1 This takes us to the end of i Samuel ; but from this account the 
books of Leviticus and Ruth are to be left out, Leviticus representing 
a later developed code of legislation, and Ruth belonging to the latest 
compiled division of the Hebrew canon. 



SEMINA LITTERARUM 

(vss. 27-30), are derived from the same source," though 
the latter, it should be ^aid, is attributed to those who 
'' speak in proverbs " (vs. 27). " The title would seem to 
indicate that the book was a treasury of war songs, national 
epics, celebrating the victories of Israel which Israel's God 
had given her over her foes." ^ These quotations are mere 
fragments, and perhaps that is why their source is named ; 
but if such an anthology was in existence, it seems not 
unlikely that it was headed by the Song of Miriam at 
the Red Sea (Exod. xv) ; and that the Song of Deborah 
belonged to the same collection. The subject matter of all 
these accords fitly with the implication of the title. 

Note. If this Book of the Wars of Jehovah was thus a repository 
of poetic pieces compiled while the Israelites were fighting for posses- 
sion of the land, it is perhaps not too presuming to attempt a list of 
the pieces that we have preserved from it : 

Song at the Red Sea, Exod. xv, 1-18. 

The Ark Song, Num. x, 35, 36. 

Song of the Valley, Num. xxi, 14, 15, — where the source is named. 

Song of the Well, Num. xxi, 17,18. 

Satire (attributed to parable-speakers) on the Fall of Heshbon, 
Num. xxi, 27-30. 

The Oracles of Balaam, Num. xxiii, xxiv. 

The Song of Deborah, Judg. v. 

Another collection of ancient song, called ''The Book of 
Jashar " (lit. the ''Upright"), is twice quoted from by name. 
The first time, in Joshua x, 12, 13, the quotation is a fervid 
address by Joshua to the sun and moon, the famous passage 
in which he bids these luminaries stand still (lit. " be 
dumb ") until he has finished his conquest of the Amorites. 

Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon, 

And thou. Moon, in the valley of Aijalon, - • 

is his apostrophe ; and the verse goes on to say : 

And the sun stood still, and the moon stayed, 

Until the nation had avenged themselves of their enemies, — 

1 Geden, " Introduction to the Hebrew Bible," pp. 267, 268. 

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a couplet which commemorates the wonders of a long after- 
noon's battle, with its hard-won vigtory. It is likelier to refer 
to a hailstorm than to a miracle ; but the prose historian 
has interpreted the lyric outburst too literally, as an actual 
stopping of the sun and a day miraculously prolonged 
(vss. 13, 14). Read as poetry, it is in much the same 
strain of enthusiastic hyperbole as we find in Deborah's 
song of victory over Sisera (Judg. v, 20) : 

From heaven fought the stars ; 

From their courses they fought against Sisera. 

The second quotation from the Book of Jashar, found 
in 2 Samuel i, 17-27, preserves for us the elegy of David 
over the death of Saul and Jonathan. The obscure note 
appended by way of preface is thought by some to indicate 
that the elegy, as taught to the people, was set to a musical 
melody entitled '' The Bow." If this is so (and we have 
examples of such prescribed melodies in the titles of some 
of the Psalms ; see, for example, Psa. xxii, title), we get a 
hint of how poetic literature was preserved and made current 
before the age of books. 

David's lament over Abner, Saul's general-in-chief 
(2 Sam. iii, 33, 34), who was treacherously assassinated by 
David's general Joab, may well have been preserved in this 
same collection. 

Notes, i. A Possible Third Reference to the Book of Jashar. 
In I Kings viii, 12, 13, the Greek version (LXX) differs from the 
Hebrew in its report of King Solomon's dedicatory prayer ; as Pro- 
fessor Robertson Smith thus translates it: 

Jehovah created the sun in the heavens, 
But he hath determined to dwell in darkness. 
" Build my house, an house of habitation for me, 
A place to dwell in eternally."^ 

To this poetic extract, which seems more ancient than its context, the 
LXX adds, " Behold, is it not written in the Book of Song.? " But, as 

1 Smith, " Old Testament in the Jewish Church," p. 403, note 2. 

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Professor Smith remarks, " the transposition of a single letter in the 
Hebrew converts the unknown Book of Song into the well-known 
Book of Jashar." So if this Greek version represents a Hebrew 
original, ha-shir may easily have been mistakenly copied for ha-yashar. 
Professor Smith remarks : " This correction seems certain. The slip 
of the Septuagint translator was not unnatural ; indeed, the same 
change is made by the Syriac in Josh, x, 13." 

2. The Contents of the Book of Jashar. This book, devoted perhaps 
to notable personages as the other cited book was to great deeds, must 
thus have covered a period of compilation just about identical with our 
period before the age of books, namely, from Joshua (or perhaps Moses) 
to Solomon. As in the case of the other book, one is tempted to 
conjecture of its contents (as preserved to us) somehow thus : 

The Song of Moses, Deut. xxxii, 1-43. 

The Blessing of Moses, Deut. xxxiii, 2-29. 

Apostrophe to Sun and Moon, Josh, x, 12, 13 (fragment). 

David's Elegy on Saul and Jonathan, 2 Sam. i, 19-27. 

David's Lament over Abner, 2 Sam. iii, 33, 34 (probably fragment). 

David's Last Words, 2 Sam. xxiii, 1-17. 

SolomorWs Words at Dedication of Temple, i Kings viii, 12, 13 
(LXX) (fragment). 

Besides these extracts thus referred to collections, the 
attribution of the Heshbon song in Numbers xxi, 27-30 to 
''them that speak in proverbs" seems to refer not to liter- 
ature preserved in books but to literature made popular 
among the people by speakers in parables, and preserved 
orally like a ballad. Such indeed is the source of most 
of the quotations that occur in the historical books. They 
come not from professional men of letters but from the 
life of the common people. They may express an ancient 
tribal sentiment, like the Song of Lamech, Gen. iv, 23, 24 ; 
or perpetuate a family oracle, like that on the birth of Esau 
and Jacob, Gen. xxv, 23 ; or preserve a popular song, like 
that sung by the women after David's victory over Goliath 
I Sam. xviii, 7 ; qf be quoted as a current proverb, as in 
David's answer to King Saul, i Sam. xxiv, 13. A great 
variety of folk sources were thus drawn upon as materials 
or corroborations of the history. 

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Note. Recognizable Extracts Listed. A list of these fragments 
and remainders to the end of David's reign is here copied from Geden's 
Introduction to the Hebrew Bible, p. 264. 

" The chief of these songs or poetical extracts, contained in the first 
eight books of the Hebrew Bible, are as follows : 
(i) Gen. iv, 23, 24. Song of Lamech. 

(2) Gen. ix, 25-27. Noah's Curse on Canaan, and Blessing on 
Japheth. 

(3) Gen. xxvii, 27-29. Isaac's Blessing of Jacob. 

(4) Gen. xxvii, 39, 40. Isaac's Blessing of Esau. 

(5) Gen. xlix, 2-27. Jacob's Prophecy of the Future of his Sons. 

(6) Exod. XV, 1-18, 21. Song at the Red Sea of Moses and the 
Children of Israel, and of Miriam. 

(7) Exod. XX, 2-17. The Ten Words, cp. Deut. v, 6-21. 

(8) Num. X, 35, 36. Words for the Taking up and Setting down 
of the Ark. 

(9) Num. xxi, 14, 15. Song of the Valley. 

(10) Num. xxi, 17, 18. Song of the Well. 

(11) Num. xxi, 27-30. Satire on the Fall of Heshbon. 

(12) Num. xxiii, 7-10, 18-24 ; xxiv, 3-9, 15-24. Oracles of Balaam, 
the Son of Beor. 

(13) Deut. xxvii, 15-26. Curses of the Law. 

(14) Deut. xxxii, 1-43. Song of Moses. 

(15) Deut. xxxiii, 2-29. Blessing of Moses, 

(16) Josh. X, 12, 13. Adjuration of Sun and Moon at Gibeon" and 
the Valley of Aijalon. 

(17) Judg. V. Song of Deborah and Barak, 

(18) Judg. ix, 8-15. Jotham's Fable of the Trees and their King, 

(19) Judg, xiv, 14, 18; XV, 16. Samson's Riddle and Sayings. 

(20) I Sam. ii, i-io. Hannah's Prayer. 

(21) I Sam. xviii, 7; xxi, 11. Celebration by the Women of David's 
Prowess. 

(22) 2 Sam. i, 19-27. David's Lament over Saul and Jonathan. 

(23) 2 Sam. iii, 33, 34. Elegy on the Death of Abner. 

(24) 2 Sam, xxii. David's Song of Deliverance ; cp. Psa. xviii. 

(25) 2 Sam. xxiii, 1-7. Last Words of David." 

The poetic language of a nation i^ in general more 
archaic in expression than the idiom of common speech 
and intercourse ; partly because archaism promotes the 
imaginative mood of poetry, and partly because the more 

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ancient usages created a norm for poetic expression. The 
literary passages quoted in the Bible as ancient bear the 
Age and marks of their archaic character. Their words 
Setting and phraseology, their grammar and syntax, their 

sentiment, all bear witness to their relative antiquity ; and 
thus these scraps of poetry and proverb have the interest 
of being the utterance of the oldest human experiences 
known to us. 

Note. In his '' Introduction to the Hebrew Bible," p. 263, Pro- 
fessor Geden says : "In the lyrics of the books of the Old Testament, 
the more or less fragmentary songs, elegies, poetical outpourings of 
natural emotion and feeling, will be found the oldest literary expres- 
sions of Hebrew thought. With this conclusion the facts of language, 
both in regard to grammar and syntax, are in entire conformity. It is 
in these pieces that the language presents itself under its most archaic 
form ; and they appear to betray in many instances the effects of a 
longer period of transmission, and even of later misunderstanding and 
attempts at repair and restoration, than do the books in general in 
which they are embedded. The origin and date of some of these are 
determined by the circumstances which they commemorate ; of others 
the source is entirely obscure. All that can be said of them is that they 
are certainly ancient. The text, moreover, is often difficult to interpret, 
and probably impaired." 

A noteworthy feature of these quotations is their fidelity 
to their setting. They never have the effect of being lugged 
in to enhance the literary beauty or interest of the history ; 
they spring naturally out of the context as if they were 
made for the place. Thus they enliven the history by pre- 
serving intimate personal touches, as from the presence of 
the event itself. From the series of them one could con- 
struct a fair idea of the spirit of early times and its progress 
from rude and savage passions to a degree of refinement 
close to the milder graces of civilization. This may be felt 
by comparing the oldest extract in the above-given list, the 
Song of Lamech, with its brutal glorification of blood re- 
venge, and some of the latest, like David's elegy over Sau) 

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and Jonathan, and his tendef last words. These hterary 
fragments and remainders thus subtend a large arc of 
human refinement and progress, before the expression of 
thought had become self-conscious and artistic. 

It is not to be concluded, however, that all of these 
quoted passages are so much more ancient than their con- 
text as to be contemporary with their event or situation. 
We have to allow for the liberty which ancient historians 
freely took of inventing or imagining speeches for their 
characters ; a custom which we see exemplified in the case 
of Thucydides. ' The Hebrew historians doubtless exercised 
the same creative freedom. Some extracts are- preserved 
unchanged, with the marks of their antiquity upon them ; 
some may be the composition of the historian himself ; and 
in many cases the quotation may be a repair or enlargement 
of ancient fragments. ' In many cases, too, the quotation, 
though more ancient than the historian's time, may not 
be so ancient as .the event to which it relates ; for other 
writers may have given their version of it, which the final 
historian found to his hand. 

Note. " That these passages," says Professor Geden (" Introduction 
to the Hebrew Bible," p. 265), " are not all of equal or even great antiq- 
uity is written patently upon the face of them. Some may even be no 
older than the prose and narrative setting in which they are found. 
All of them, however, deserve careful study at the hands of those who 
would understand the nature and growth of the Hebrew language 
and literature." 

II 

The Native Mold of Literary Form. Both frorh the 
fragments and remainders that we have noted, and from 
the narratives in which they are embedded, we can see 
what is the native genius of the Hebrews for literature, 
and in what forms it found most spontaneous expression, 
before the time of written books. 

As is true of all nations, the earliest form that was 

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SEMINA LITTERARUM 

consciously literary was poetic. It had the intense and 
elevated diction, the imaginative and figurative tone, and 
In the Poetic the aptly molded phrase, which are essential to 
strain poetry. In the Revised Version much of this, 

even in the historical books, is printed in lines as poetry ; and 
this helps readers greatly in realizing its poetic quality. It 
must be noted, however, that poetry loses much by trans- 
lation into another tongue ; and in judging of its quality 
one must rely less on the form than on the general elevated 
key of imagination and passion. 

The verse of the Hebrew poetry is not founded, as is 
modern verse, either on a system of quantitative meter or 
on a rhyming system. What rhythm can be traced is 
accentual, and what rhyme occurs is casual or accidental. 
The verse is composed rather on a unit of parallelism ; that 
is to say, the lines are generally in couplets, in which the 
second line repeats the structure and in some way the idea 
of the first. A simple example of this may be seen in 
what is perhaps the oldest verse in the Bible, the song of 
Lamech (Gen. iv, 23, 24) ; in which the three pairs of lines, 
and the likeness of idea in each pair, will be noted : 

' Adah and Zillah, hear my voice ; 
Ye wives of Lamech, hearken unto my speech : 
For I have slain a man for wounding me, 
And a young man for bruising me : 
If Cain shall be avenged sevenfold, 
Truly Lamech seventy and sevenfold. 

This exhibits the verse unit in primitive simplicity ; being 
a song in synonymous couplets or parallelisms. A variety 
of relations, however, may exist between the coupled lines. 
They may be virtually synonymous, saying nearly the same 
thing twice ; as in the song just quoted, and in the following 
couplet from Deborah : 

Why is his chariot so long in coming? 
Why tarry the wheels of his chariots ? 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

Or the second line may give the obverse or contrast to the 
first ; as in the following from the Book of Proverbs : 

Righteousness exalteth a nation ; 

But sin is a reproach to any people (xiv, 34), 

Or the second line may intensify and enlarge upon the 
first ; as in the following, also from Proverbs : 

He that hath an evil eye hasteth after riches, 

And knoweth not that want shall come upon him (xxviii, 22). 

In any case the verse is a kind of thought-rhyme ; thoughts 
instead of sounds being paired together and aided by similarity 
of structure. This is its essential unit, which is apparent how- 
ever the verse is refined by cultivation. It developed indeed 
an accentual measure of its own ; but the minuter study of 
this belongs rather to the original than to a translation. 

The historical books, with their frequent quotation of 
more primitive material, furnish good occasion to note the 
native forms most congenial to the Hebrew mind. Of these 
forms in the poetic strain we may here distinguish the 
two that spring naturally from the opposite moods of joy 
and grief ; namely, the song and the elegy or lament. 

The Song {shir), represented in numerous fragments and 

by such complete examples as the songs of Miriam and 

Deborah, is in every nation the most spontane- 

I. The Song , , "^ r 1 i • 1 

ous and natural utterance or the higher senti- 
ments and emotions. Rising out of the common occasions 
of life, like birth and marriage, and out of the inspiring 
events, like help in fellowship and victory in war, it per- 
petuates the wholesome spirit of family and communal life 
from age to age. It is the best literaiy form for oral trans- 
mission, its versified structure being favorable to preserva- 
tion unaltered, and its accompaniment of music or chanting 
giving it at once elevation and popular currency. 

Note. The oldest Hebrew songs that we have show already a 
high degree of poetic and constructive skill, indicating that in this 

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kind of literature the Israelites, when we first make contemporary con- 
tact with their mind, were well advanced in the sense of poetic values. 
As the historians were concerned with public and religious matters, 
they would naturally not retain songs of a private or family nature ; 
but Gen. xxxi, 27, shows that such songs were customary, and in 
Gen. xxiv, 60, we have a poetic blessing pronounced on the occasion 
of Rebekah's leaving home to marry Isaac : 

Our sister, be thou the mother of thousands of ten thousands, 
And let thy seed possess the gate of those that hate them. 

One Scripture book. The Song of Solomon, preserves a lyric cycle of 
such nuptial songs. Of songs of thanksgiving over birth one may note 
Hannah's song, i Sam. ii, i-io, a type reproduced in the Magnificat, 
Luke i, 46-55. Songs of victory are well illustrated by the chorus of 
women after David's victory over Goliath, i Sam. xviii, 7. Songs of 
religious worship and praise, both public and private, make up the 
main body of Hebrew poetry; the Book of Psalms is all composed 
of such; -and later songs occur in the prophecies, for example^ Isa. v, 
1-7; xii ; xxvi, 1-7; Hab. iii ; Jonah ii. Moses' song and blessing, 
Deut. xxxii, xxxiii. David's review song (identical with Psa. xviii) 
and last words, 2 Sarq. xxii, xxiii ; and Hezekiah's thanksgiving for 
recovery from sickness, Isa. xxxviii, 10-20, are of more public and 
national significance. 

Occasions of grief, private or public, called forth another 

lyric type, exemplified by such poems as David's dirge over 

Saul and Jonathan (2 Sam. i), which he seems 

2. The Elegy , "^ , , . ^ , ; ^ ... 

to nave taught his people to smg. it was distm- 
guished from the song by a class name, kinah^ "lament." 
The form of the verse, too, is varied, the couplet unit 
consisting of a long line answered by a shorter one. The 
first couplet of David's dirge illustrates this feature : 

Thy glor}', O Israel, is slain upon thy high places ! 
How are the mighty fallen ! 

In David's lament over Abner (2 Sam. iii, 33, 34) we have 
the fragment of another elegy. 

Note. The form of the lament or elegy, rising tiaturally out of 
bereavement or calamity, was cultivated to a high state of development 
in later times. In 2 Chronicles xxxv, 25, the national lament over King 

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Josiah is thus narrated : " And Jeremiah lamented for Josiah : and all 
the singing men and singing women spake of Josiah in their lamentations 
unto this day ; and they made them an ordinance in Israel : and behold, 
they are written in the lamentations." Jeremiah, in xxii, i8, denies the 
honor of a public lamentation to King Jehoiakim : " They shall not 
lament for him, saying, Ah my brother ! or. Ah sister ! They shall not 
lament for him, saying, Ah lord ! or. Ah his glory ! " A whole Scripture 
book, the Lamentations, is made up of elegies composed on the occa- 
sion of the fall of Jerusalem ; and these are still chanted at the Jews' 
Wailing Place at the foot of the old Temple wall. 

With all its emotional intensity, finding expression in 
poetry, the Hebrew mind was eminently matter-of-fact and 
In the practical ; and this made the prose vehicle fully 

Prose Mood ^s natural a form of expression as the poetic. 
Much of the poetry, though maintaining the parallelism 
and workmanship of verse, is hardly distinguishable in 
feeling from prose. This is especially true of such litera- 
ture as proverbs ; as one can feel from such a specimen 
couplet as this : 

He that is slow to anger is better than the mighty ; 
And he that ruleth his spirit than he that taketh a city, 

which is in the didactic mood of prose. The prophecies, 
which we shall notice later, are as much like oratory as like 
poetry ; they may be best read, indeed, as impassioned 
prose, with occasional passages in more poetic strain. 

Of the forms in prose mood which in the historic books 
reveal the native genius, we may mention two : the Mashal 
and the Folk Tale. 

We leave this word mashal untranslated because no one 
word of our language fully represents it. The mashal was 
3. The the form of utterance for something especially 

Mashal memorable or weighty, something to be laid to 

heart or to set one thinking, — in a word, for didactic mat- 
ter. The wo^:d mashal is generally translated '' proverb " 
(see, for example, i Sam. xxiv, 13), sometimes ''parable" 
(see, for example, Num. xxiii, 7) ; but both the sententious 

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form connoted by the one word and the sustained form con- 
noted by the other are incidental, not essential. The word 
means primarily "likeness," or "comparison"; and refers 
to that form of presentation in which an illustrative figure, 
like simile, an illustrative story, like fable, or even a pointed 
contrast or antithesis, is used to convey a lesson. In the 
broad sense, it is the kind of literature which employs the 
principle of analogy ; and this, as we shall see, was the He- 
brews' unit of reasoning, rather than by premise and con- 
clusion as with the Greeks, As to specific forms, the mashal 
may designate fables, parables, riddles, maxims, aphorisms ; it 
may be expressed either in prose or in verse. Its tendency 
is toward as pointed and condensed a style as possible ; and 
when it employs verse it is more for the sake of its point 
and phrasing than for its emotional or picturing character. 
The mashal tended most to the verse form when most 
directly didactic. It rose out of the kind of utterance most 
racy of the soil, namely, the folk proverb ; see, as an instance, 
the answer of the outlawed David to King Saul, vindicating 
himself (i Sam. xxiv, 13), in which he quotes an ancient folk 
maxim. For the origin of a proverb see I Sam. x, 12. The 
riddle of Samson and its answer (Judg. xiv, 14, 18) is an 
example of a verse mashal composed for an occasion : 

Out of the eater came forth food, 

And out of the strong came forth sweetness, 

in which one may note the hidden antithesis giving it 
point. The masljal in verse form was also used for es- 
pecially important utterances like a prophetic oracle ; thus 
Balaam's oracles given in trance (Num. xxiii, xxiv) are 
called mashals. Another use of it was as a vehicle of 
satire, or what is called a taunt song ; ^ thus the song of 
exultation over Heshbon (Num. xxi, 27-30) is attributed 
to those " who speak in mashals." 

1 Cf. Habakkuk ii, 6 : " Shall not all these take up a parable {mashal) 
against him, and a taunting proverb against him ? " 

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The analogy principle of the mashal, however, was used 
most effectively when it was expressed as . a familiarly told 
tale or apologue, setting forth its lesson in an indirectly 
didactic way, as a case analogous to the one to be taught. 
A fine example of this kind of prose mashal is Jotham's 
fable, Judg. ix, 8-15, in which the trees are represented as 
talking together and choosing a king. The use of a parable 
as a delicate means of conveying reproof is illustrated by 
Nathan's parable, 2 Sam. xii, 1-4, and the wise woman 
of Tekoa's fictitious story, 2 Sa]^. xiv ; in both of which 
instances King David, pronouncing judgment on a hypo- 
thetical case, is made to pass adverse judgment on himself. 
The answer of King Jehoash to King Amaziah about a pro- 
posed gage of battle, 2 Kings xiv, 8-10, is a prose mashal 
used as a weapon of sarcasm. 

Note. Later Developments. All these are taken from the early 
historical books, as. examples of the pre-literary mashal ; but like the 
song, the mashal was later taken up and cultivated to a very artistic 
form of literature. The Book of Proverbs {in'' shaliin) is a collection of 
mashals of a specific type, the Solomonic mashal, which was the mo^t 
condensed and finished of all. The last discourses of Job (see xxvii, i 
and xxix, i), which are called mashals, present the verse in a more 
flowing and continuous form. The sage Ecclesiastes made it his oc- 
cupation to compile, compose, and arrange mashals, both prose and 
poetic (Eccl. xii, 9). The parables of Jesus may be regarded as the 
most charming as well as the most matured form of the mashal. 

As a reflection of the Hebrew mind not only the literary 
quotations embedded in the history but the history. itself is 
4. The to be reckoned with ; and indeed this history 

Folk Tai^ embodies, especially from Judges through 2 Sam- 
uel, the most intimate product, the nearest to the people's 
common life, of the ages before books. For its ground- 
work is essentially folk story, such as grows immediately 
out of the event, with its atmosphere of folk customs, 
relations, ideas. Though gathered later into a continuous 
history, with a framework of chronology, connecting links, 

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SEMINA LITTERARUM 

and elucidative comment, these folk tales still retain the 
color and raciness of their oral origin, and are doubtless 
a true reflection of the history as it essentially was. Thus 
all that is vivid and moving in the history comes down to 
us straight from concrete experience. In this sense, then, 
we can read the bulk of the early history as contemporary 
literature. It is folk tale, such as comes from the camp, the 
home, and the city-gate ; shaped and pruned and tempered 
by long oral transmission, but also reflecting a native genius 
for simple and telling narration. 

Notes, i . The Native Genius for N'a7^7'ation. Some remarks of 
Professor Sanday, in ''The Life of Christ in Recent Research," p. 15, 
are as applicable to Old Testament narrative as to New : " Where the 
Hebrew historian is writing of events that are still fresh in men's 
memory, and where he is drawing upon good contemporary sources, 
he is an excellent narrator. There is no redundance of language, no 
straining after effect, no obscurity of detail, and yet the human feeling 
of the story, the pathos and the tragedy, come out of themselves in a 
way that is strangely moving. It is like the simple, dignified, reserved, 
and yet expressive speech that seems natural to the East, and that in 
the Bible always has the religious sense behind it." 

2. The Oral Standard of Narrative. That the type of Biblical 
narrative was set by the oral or folk tale, may be seen from the fol- 
lowing, about the gospel story, from Professor Hill, " Introduction to 
the Life of Christ," p. 26 : " At the outset the story was, of course, 
wholly oral. The presence of eye-witnesses obviated the necessity of 
resorting to written documents ; and, moreover, the Jews shared the 
Oriental feeling, that religious truth ought to pass from teacher to 
learner by word of mouth and not by writing. All the great mass 
of the Talmud was for generations handed down orally, and its final 
reduction to writing was opposed by many. And the same preference 
for oral teaching is expressed by Papias, a Christian of the second 
century, when speaking of learning about Christ's life : ' I did not 
think that what was to be gotten from the books would profit me as 
much as what came from the living and abiding voice.' Such oral 
accounts of what Jesus said. and did would have a more or less stereo- 
typed form, partly because any account often repeated grows stereo- 
typed in form, and still more because the tenacious Oriental memory 
reproduces exactly whatever has been delivered to it." 

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Of the Bible history as a completed whole, a future 
chapter is the place to speak. ^ We are dealing here merely 
with an important component element : the current or tra- 
ditional folk tales which were so intimately woven with it 
as to impart to it their own prevailing tone. These stories 
are of course Oriental in color, reflecting the imaginative 
intensity of the Semitic mind. As compared with other 
Oriental stories, however, like for instance the Arabian 
Nights, they are singularly free from the fantastic or gro- 
tesque, are simple and sane, and use the utmost economy 
of detail to get the essentials of the story told. There 
seems to have been,- as far back as we can trace, a steady- 
ing influence at work at the core of the people's life, which 
kept their thought and imagination poised and realistic. It 
is by virtue of such qualities that the men and events of so 
small a nation and so remote a time have become more 
memorable, and have added more to the moral and spiritual 
outfit of the ages, than any other men and events in 
the world. 

Ill 

Avails and Deficits of the Pre-Literary Times. It will 
be noted that while we have traced the quoted fragments 
of poetry from prehistoric times, we have not pushed the 
folk tale back beyond the Book of Judges. The stories of 
Genesis and of the experience in the Wilderness do not be- 
long so truly to the folk tale ; they are legends gathered by 
scholars and teachers and containing more of the interpre- 
tative and symbolical ; the time to speak of them is later. 
Meanwhile, in the general tone of the folk tale, the rude 
heroism and adventure, the savage elemental passions, the 
primitive customs, the undeveloped religion not unmixed 
with superstition, of a people just emerging from nomadism 

1 See Looking Before and After, Chapter III, I. 

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SEMINA LITTERARUM 

to a settled and organized life, are faithfully reproduced. 
As we go on from the times of the Judges through the 
two books of Samuel this folk-tale coloring enables us to 
realize the gradual refinement of the people's customs and 
ideas, as they gain a surer hold on land and religion and 
reach more civilized conditions in life : a period coinciding 
with the gradual fusion of tribal and clannish elements into 
national unity, and the establishment of monarchy under the 
first two kings, Saul and David. 

We have put the historic period from Joshua to Solomon 
before the age of books, not because there was no written 
„ . , literature in that period, but because literature in 

Heroic and ^ ' 

Personal any finished or efficient form was not a felt ele- 
timuus ment of life and culture. The literary ages, with 
the diffused sense of literary values, came later. Meanwhile, 
in those primitive social conditions, the great moving and 
educative power among men was the power of masterful 
personality. In the men of mind and achievement who, 
born and reared among them and sharing in their common 
lot, emerged to distinction as warriors, judges, and seers, 
the people recognized not only their natural masters but 
the personal ideal to which insensibly their lives con- 
formed. This was the primal source of Israel's early morals 
and enlightenment, the unspoken pattern of human worth 
and honor. 

A characteristic trait, accordingly, of these pre-literary 
ages is that they are rich in personality, especially in strong 
and rough-hewn characters ; men like all others limited and 
faulty, but with strong convictions and deeds to their credit 
which endow them with influence. Instead of books and 
diffused ideas, such as we have, these heroic times had 
among them such real embodiments of faith and character 
as Deborah, Gideon, Jephthah, Samson, Samuel, Saul, 
Jonathan, David ; each in his way infusing some personal 
light and stimulus into the common life of the people. 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

Note. Two or three instances of this personal ascendancy, out of 
many, may be cited, to show how dependent the people were upon it 
and how responsive to it. Gideon's boldness in breaking down the altar 
of Baal and setting up an altar to Jehovah in its place (Judg. vi, 25-32) 
changed the religious allegiance of the people and earned him a name 
and leadership. The incident of the people's rescue of Jonathan from 
the death he had incurred for his unwitting violation of a taboo ( i Sam. 
xiv, 45) is an indication of his extraordinary hold on the people's affec- 
tion, a passion which overrode a deep-seated religious feeling. The 
whole life of David as an outlaw, his magnanimity toward the jealous 
king, his generous treatment of foes, his enforced Robin Hood role 
(see especially i Sam. xxii, i, 2), is a telling example of what a lovable 
and generous personality may do to tame and ennoble the crude 
passions of men. 

What a people can get from personal contact and influ- 
ence is after all only as great as the person ; and the person, 
N db d however distinguished in some ways, is at best 
Personal only a Step in advance of his time. Besides, too, 
scendancy ^i^];jQu|- ^ sincere Conscience or a fixed standard 
of principle, personal ascendancy is as apt to be degrading 
as elevating. If there may be a Gideon, strong in rugged 
faith, there may also be an Abimelech, strong only in base 
self-aggrandizement ; and Gideon himself, after his victories 
in the pure worship of Jehovah, may lapse into a subtle and 
corrupting idolatry (see Judg. viii, 24-27). The defect in 
mere personal ascendancy is well illustrated by the down- 
ward trend of the nation, in spite of the occasional faith 
and valor of the Judges, during the period from the death 
of Joshua to Samuel. Of the sad depth that the nation 
by Samuel's time had reached the Biblical description is : 
''The word of Jehovah was rare in those days; there was 
no frequent vision" (i Sam. iii, i; cf. Prov. xxix, 18); 
while of a somewhat earlier time the repeated description 
is : ''In those days there was no king in Israel ; every 
man did that which was right in his own eyes " (Judg. 
xvii, 6; xxi, 25). There was lack of a common enlighten- 
ment and steadying power in the mind of the people. 

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SEMINA LITTERARUM 

Note. The following sketch of that time of deterioration is given 
by Principal Miller, in '* The Least of All Lands," p. 215 : 

" The history from Joshua to Samuel is one of continual and steady 
degradation. It is relieved, no doubt, by bursts of faith and valor ; but, 
so far as our scanty materials enable us to judge, each outburst when it 
came found the people in a more hopeless state than the one before it. 
And, speaking roughly, each of them was in itself a meaner and weaker 
thing than its predecessor. Gideon may have been greater than Barak, 
but there is reason to believe that he elevated the character and purposes 
of the people less. And with the great names that come after Gideon's, 
the falling-off is manifest and great. Jephthah was little more than a 
rough freebooter in whom such faith in the God of his fathers as he had 
could scarcely struggle into half-formed shape. And the deeds of Samson 
are those of one on whom a higher mood came rarely and whose faith 
could never embody itself in steady purpose. Such as they were, his 
deeds did not touch the popular heart or rouse the energy even of hjs 
own tribe. With those who fought for Israel in the days of Eli, the 
lowest depth is reached. In the weak old man himself, there was still 
some spark of devotion to Jehovah and his cause ; but, from all around 
him, the last relics of reverence and noble purpose and moral life were 
gone.^ On the fatal day when the glory departed and the ark of God 
was taken, the Israel that drew its life from Shiloh fell as completely as 
Saxon England had fallen when Duke William's meal was spread in 
the place of slaughter at nightfall of the day of Saint Calixtus." 

This suggests what is needed beyond the prowess or 
ascendancy of personal leaders. It is what is here called 
vision : that insight into life and truth beyond the impulse 
or passion of the moment, that educated conscience and 
sincere homage to the ideal, which the primitive people 
depended on their prophets to impart, but which we get 
through our heritage of literature. For the true and solid 
progress of mankind there must be evolved a body of 
literary instruction ; a fund of ideas, tested, authoritative, in- 
spiring, comprehensive, which shall be the property of all, 
and whose power will work in the common mind when 
the masterful personage is not present or after he is dead. 
Such literature traces indeed to personal sources. But to 

1 I Sam. ii, 17, 22. 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

the power of the person, who with all his greatness may 
be capricious or inconsistent or one-sided, must be added 
the steadying and enlightening power of ideas. 

Note. On the need beyond personal ascendancy, Professor Gardiner 
remarks, in " Exploratio Evangelica," p. 5 : " It is true that in the pres- 
ence of a mighty spirit and leader of men, his direct commands may be 
taken as principles of action, and not expressed in terms of the intellect. 
But in ordinary times, and among thoughtful men^ religious doctrine is 
as necessary to the healthy and normal development of a community as 
are faith and self-denial." 

Our survey of the times before the age of books has 
revealed literature as it were in the germ : the song, the 
p p _ mashal, the elegy, the folk tale, all like a run- 
sonaito wild oral utterance. It is significant, however, 
^ ^^^ that later, when the specific lines of literature 

are gathered into a permanent canon — law, prophecy, poetry 
— all are attributed to personal sources of this period. 
To Moses is ascribed the beginnings of law, to Samuel 
the beginnings of prophecy and statesmanship, to David 
the beginnings of lyric religious poetry. One more great 
name, that of Solomon, is connected with a literary type, 
the mashal or wisdom type ; and his activity immediately 
succeeds to this period of the Semina Litterarum. Thus 
the great centers of literary light and influence are recog- 
nized as personal ; but their personality is translated into 
abiding ideas. 



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CHAPTER II 

AWAKING OF THE LITERARY SENSE 

[Under the reign of Solomon, 970-933 B.C.] 

THE founding of the Temple, in the fourth year of King 
Solomon's reign (i Kings vi, i) was deemed by the 
Scripture historians to mark an important date in the nation's 
life : important both for the period that it closed and for 
the new order then opening. The number of years after 
the deliverance from Eg)'pt was carefully noted, as if that 
closing period had its own meaning. The year of the king's 
reign, and the month, are noted with equal care, as if the 
event thus dated were an epoch for all time. When a nation 
can thus begin to number its years, and to set off periods 
of its history, its existence is beginning to show meaning 
and promise ; it has an organic idea. 

The religious import of the building of the Temple is 
obvious. The central worship of Israel, hitherto held in a 
tent, was now established in a permanent building. Here 
then was the religious capital of the nation : a center for 
the standard service and instruction, and a point of pilgrim- 
age for the various annual feasts. But because religion in 
ancient times was never dissociated from civic, social, and 
business affairs, the import of this event for the nation's 
secular life was equally great. The Temple, in fact, was only 
one of a whole group of public buildings, which included 
not only the palace of the king but an extensive series of 
halls, courts, and porches, for civic administration and judg- 
ment. As time went on it became the central place for 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

banking and business, for schools and tribunals, for archives 
and libraries. The distinctive national life, in short, was 
concentrated here.^ 

I. The Quickened National Self-Consciousness 

The founding of the Temple is but one of many signs of 
the times indicating the birth of national self-consciousness 
among the scattered tribes, with the pride and patriotism 
corresponding. At this epochal point, with a feeling of rest, 
security, and realized hope, the Hebrew people could look 
back over the twelve generations of almost constant war and 
unsettledness, and of the gradual fusion of rival and turbu- 
lent tribes ; until now Israel had become a united nation, 
with a definite standing among the nations of the earth. 

During the reign of Solomon the Israelites and their 
tributary peoples covered the largest expanse of territory the 
The Larger State ever controlled (i Kings iv, 20, 21). As 
Civic Scale tj^g reign was mainly one of peace, there was 
opportunity for domestic upbuilding and prosperity ; and this 
showed itself especially in the king's extensive enterprises 
in building, which just for the Temple and the royal palace 
occupied a period of twenty years. To promote this industry, 
much of which was carried on by forced labor, and to pro- 
vide for the lavish wants of the court, the kingdom was or- 
ganized on an elaborate scale ; in which the tribal divisions, 
inherited from more primitive times, were discarded from the 
machinery of government, and an organization more arbitrary 
and despotic took their place. To obtain materials for build- 
ing, alliance was made with the neighboring kingdom of Tyre, 
in which were situated the celebrated forests of Lebanon. 
King Solomon also made commercial ventures on his own 
account ; even to the extent of a navy of ships and a port 
on the Red Sea (i Kings ix, 26), and a partnership in the 
Phoenician trade with Tartessus in Spain (i Kings x, 22). 

1 G. A. Smith, "Jerusalem," Vol. I, pp. 352 ff., 365. 

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AWAKING OF THE LITERARY SENSE 

With all this energy in government and commerce Solo- 
mon had also a disposition for display and luxury. His 
temper was that of the Oriental despot ; sagacious indeed, 
and not willfully tyrannical, but self-indulgent and extrava- 
gant, to a degree that cost his kingdom dear.* One thing, 
however, his reign did, in spite of the despotism it main- 
tained and the hardships it caused : it raised the nation, 
hitherto absorbed in local and clannish affairs, to a broader 
plane of civilization, where they became aware of a world's 
interests and business. This brought its new sphere of 
relations and ideas. 

The whole tone of the history of Solomon's time, as we 
have this in the books of Kings and Chronicles (i Kings 
Reflection in ^^~^ ' ^ Chron. i-ix). Strongly reflects the feeling 
the Popular of childlike wonder and zest with which the 
^^^ people, to whom such splendors and luxuries as 

Solomon's were strange and new, contemplated the more 
spacious order of things. His wisdom, his wealth, his regal 
display, his magnificent undertakings in architecture and 
trade, are told in such superlatives as indicate that the teller 
was not to the manner born. No other personage in Israel's 
history, in fact, is surrounded by such an atmosphere of 
legend and fancy as is King Solomon. The Scripture ac- 
count, indeed, is sober in comparison with the marvels of 
many Oriental tales, supernatural and magical, that are told 
of him ; but the heightened tone of the Scripture accounts 
themselves indicates that his memory lives in Israel's kindled 
imagination as his father David's memory lives in their 
affections. • 

All this indicates that under Solomon the people entered 
for the first time upon a stage of national life and civiliza- 
tion wherein their native genius was adapted to act freely 
and expand. The nomadic and pastoral life of the wilder- 
ness, or a life purely agricultural and rustic such as they 
had hitherto lived in Canaan, was not their most congenial 

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GUIDEBOOK* TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

element. Their true field of development lay in a social 
and urban type of civilization : a life which opened into 
prosperous enterprise, business undertakings, the gain and 
care of v^ealth, intercourse and commerce with the world. 
And when tfiey had surmounted their primitive conditions, 
and found themselves on the threshold of this kind of 
life, it was like awaking to a new world of thought and 
imaginatioTi. 

Such awakening naturally finds outlet in expression where- 
in this attitude of mind has free and creative play. Accord- 
ingly, it is to this age that we trace the people's quickened 
response to a more liberal range of utterance and to literary 
values as such. We perceive it in the way the native liter- 
ary forms pass from a run-wild and artless stage to a stage 
of self-conscious and disciplined cultivation. We perceive it 
too in the way the mor.e dominating types of literature begin 
to be developed. 

II. Initiative in Two Gifted Kings 

Not only was the people of Israel responding to a new 
type and stage of civilization. Personal influence and as- 
cendancy too was at its highest and wholesomest. Out of 
the times succeeding the chaotic era of the Judges had come 
names of strong personalities, whose power survived to tone 
up the people's mind : Samuel, the venerable last judge and 
king-maker ; Saul, the ill-fated first king and military cham- 
pion ; Jonathan, the brave and chivalrous crown prince un- 
timely slain ; David, who as popular hero even in outlawry 
and forced exile showed his essential nobility and magna- 
nimity of character, and in his succession to royalty not only 
established a capital and religious center but built himself 
into men's hearts in a love which condoned his faults ; Joab, 
whose able generalship went far to atone for his hard arbi- 
trariness of nature ; and finally Solomon, whose sagacity and 

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AWAKING OF THE LITERARY SENSE 

organizing vigor so captivated the people's imagination that 
they were well pleased, for a time, to submit their national 
pace to his scale of Oriental luxury and splendor. Never 
afterward in their history did the tide of personal ascendancy 
rise so high. 

Of these great names two stand out preeminent in this 
period for the impulse they gave to literature. They are 
the names of the two kings, father and son, David and 
Solomon. Each of these was in his way generously endowed 
with literary gifts ; and each is identified in tradition with 
a type of the more artistic and developed literature. In tra- 
dition, I say, rather than in history ; for their actual work, 
if any of it is extant, is buried in the work of later genera- 
tions. It is important therefore to note what historical war- 
rant there is, if any, for ascribing to them so eminent a 
place in the nation's roll of authorship. 



David's Part in the Literary Awakening. As a minstrel 
and singer, endowed with the gift both of poetry and of music, 
David was already famous in youth. It was he, it will be re- 
membered, who was sent for to charm away the melancholic 
spirit of King Saul by his harp-playing (i Sam. xvi, 14-23). 
He is mentioned by the prophet Amos in connection with 
the musical instruments used in secular feasts (Amos vi, 5) ; 
and the instruments used in the orchestral service of the 
Temple in King Hezekiah's time were called " instruments 
of David " (2 Chron. xxix, 26, 2^ ; cf. i Chron. xxiii, 5). 
These references would indicate that his chief distinction 
was as an inventor and maker of stringed instruments. In 
the poem ascribed to him as his ''last words," however, he 
is described as 

The anointed of the God of Jacob, 
And the sweet psalmist of Israel ; 

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or, more literally, ''the joy of the songs of Israel," where the 
word for songs is the specific term for songs set to music. 

Of undoubted poetic compositions from his hand we have 
the famous lament over Saul and Jonathan (2 Sam. i, 19-27), 
and a shorter one over Abner (2 Sam. iii, 33, 34), to show 
that he cultivated the form of song called the kinah, or 
elegy. Besides these there are ascribed to him a song of 
thanksgiving (2 Sam. xxii), composed when his kingdom 
was securely established, — the same poem being repeated 
as one of the Psalms (Psa. xviii) ; and an ode called " the 
last words of David " (2 Sam. xxiii, 1-7), in which latter 
the aged monarch passes in devout and grateful review the 
experiences of his reign. 

King David's chief literary distinction, however, consists 
in the fact that tradition has made him the father of Israel's 
sacred lyric poetry. A whole scripture book, the Book of 
Psalms, though containing many poems ascribed to other 
authors, is named for him as founder and originator. As 
completely compiled, it appears as the anthem book for the 
temple services ; and to the individual Psalms are appended 
many titles, or labels, relating to their authorship, their musi- 
cal use, their class as poems, and their historical occasion. 
Of the one hundred and fifty Psalms contained in the book 
seventy-three are ascribed to David. It is to be remembered, 
however, that these titles are later additions to the text, rep- 
resenting the conclusions of compilers long after David's 
time ; and we do not know what warrant these had for 
attributing the poems to David. We are to remember also 
that these Psalms, as they were used for liturgical purposes, 
were subject like our hymns to revision and adaptation to 
later conditions. The conjecture, therefore, just what or how 
many of the Psalms are of David's actual composition, is 
hazardous. At the same time, the appended titles, while not 
to be trusted implicitly, are not to be too lightly dismissed. 
They represent at least a very old tradition. 

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AWAKING OF THE LITERARY SENSE 

. The Book of Psalms as a gradually compiled and even- 
tually completed collection will come up for consideration 
later.i Our concern here is with David's relation to it, 
which as we shall see was larger than that of mere author- 
ship and musical genius. 

II 

Solomon's Relation to Literature. Although Solomon 
is known to history as the builder of the Temple and so 
as the organizer of a centralized state worship, his personal 
influence was not distinctively religious. Nor was he, as his 
father had been, a man of war. He was on the one side 
a man of the world, interested in civic, industrial, and 
commercial affairs, and on the other side, a man of liberal 
artistic and literary tastes. It was in these directions that 
he gave a new and powerful impulse to the progress of 
the Israelite state. When he began to reign over them the 
people were clannish and provincial ; he worked to infuse 
into them something of a cosmopolitan sense, and to give 
them self-confidence and self-respect as a nation. 

Solomon's love of display and luxury, which is such 
a striking feature of his reign, was only a surface trait, 
like the untempered tastes of the new-rich. Nor was his 
despotism so much a disposition as a careless aping of the 
ways, of other Oriental monarchs. The inherent quality 
for which succeeding ages have known and honored him 
is his wisdom. In the popular account of his reign, as 
reflected in the narratives of i Kings, this is set forth by 
the story of his dream request at Gibeon and its answer 
*(i Kings iii, 4-15); by a specimen example of his acute- 
ness and sagacity as a magistrate (i Kings iii, 16-28) ; and 
by his cleverness in answering the hard questions of the 
Queen of Sheba (i Kings x, i-io). Such things would 

1 See Chapter V, I, iii, "Treasures from the Older Literature," and 
Chapter VIII, II, i, ''The Five Books of Psalms." 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

take the fancy, as they still do, of a people not yet schooled 
to literature. But beyond this also, there is introduced into 
the story of his reign an element the like of which we do 
not see under any other monarch, except to some degree 
under Hezekiah. From the enthusiastic account in i Kings 
iv, 29-34, we see that his court was not only a center of 
wealth and luxury but of keen intellectual activity. Stimu- 
lated by the brilliant versatility of the young king, the men 
of rank and position began to cultivate literature for its 
own sake, and with regard not only to its substance but 
its artistry. Their work was, in its primitive way, something 
like the vigorous intellectual activity of the court sonneteers 
and euphuists of Queen Elizabeth's time. Of the extraor- 
dinary literary vigor of Solomon's reign the king himself 
was the promoter and patron, surpassing the cleverest men 
of letters in their own field. He spoke, it is said, three 
thousand proverbs or mashals ; and his songs were one 
thousand and five. The sources from which he drew his 
lessons of wisdom are indicated : the realm of animal and 
vegetable nature, which suggested to him a wealth of spirit- 
ual analogies. The principle of the mashal, as we will 
recall, is likeness or analogy ; and here not natural science 
but the definite search for such lessons is meant. It was 
like the occupation of the Duke in Shakespeare's play, who 
with his companions in cultured leisure is curious to 

Find tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, 
Sermons in stones and good in everything.-^ 

It is from what this account indicates, especially, that we 
deduce our chapter heading, Awaking of the Literary Sense.- 
We trace this awaking to the time and court of King 
Solomon, and to men of refinement and taste who were 
ardent in the pursuit of letters and learning to emulate the 
men of other nations. 

1 "As You Like It," Act II, scene i, 16. 

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AWAKING OF THE LITERARY SENSE 

Of literary work that in its present form can be identi- 
fied as Solomon's there is much less than in the case 
of David. His speech at the dedication of the Temple 
(i Kings viii, 12-21), which there is reason to think may 
have been originally preserved in the Book of Jashar,^ is 
likeliest to have been his personal utterance. Two of the 
Psalms (Ixxii, cxxvii) are by title ascribed to him, and the 
sentiment and subject matter of them are not unfitting to 
his time ; we are to remember, however, that the titles of 
the Psalms are later than the text and perhaps conjectural. 

Two books of Scripture have his name in their titles. 
They are : '' The Proverbs of Solomon the Son of David, 
King of Israel," and ''The Song of Songs, which is 
Solomon's." The first of these, however, is confessedly 
a collection of utterances from various authors and ages ; 
and at Chapter x, i, the title ''The Proverbs of Solomon" 
is repeated, as if to distinguish his vvork from that of others. 
The attribution to Solomon therefore, it would seem, may 
be meant to express not personal authorship but kind or 
style ; as if in modern terms we should say Solomonic 
mashals, as distinguished from those of other species. As 
a matter of fact the mashals thus named are so different 
from others as to merit that distinguishing term. In the 
same way the " Song of Songs, which is Solomon's," may 
designate the highest example of that peculiar species of song 
the Solomonic ; it is certainly very different from any other 
songs in the Bible. Both these books then, as it would seem, 
stand as monuments of the literary movement which began 
with the awaking of the literary sense in Solomon's time ; 
the nature of which movement we have now to consider. 

Note. Solomoii's Fa7ne and Name in Literature. Besides the 
Proverbs and the Song of Songs, which are ascribed to Solomon by 
name, the Book of Ecclesiastes, or Koheleth, purports, under a symbolic 
name meaning the '' preacher " or '' counselor," to give King Solomon's 

1 See above, p. 60, note. 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

philosophy of Hfe. Its title is, " The Words of the Preacher (Koheleth, 
Ecclesiastes), the Son of David, King in Jerusalem" ; and in the portion 
from Chapter i, 12, to ii, 26, Solomon's wealth and wisdom, his use 
of them and its results, are ideally described. In the later times before 
Christ, when it was a general custom to name books for illustrious 
personages, one of the apocryphal books, purporting to contain wisdom 
that came to Solomon in ansv/er to his prayer at Gibeon (cf. Wisdom, 
vii, 7, 8 ; ix, 7, 8), is called " The Wisdom of Solomon." There is also 
a collection of psalms, eighteen in number, compiled only a few decades 
before Christ, which, on the warrant of titles similar to those of the 
Davidic Psalms, is called " The Psalms of Solomon." 



III. Evolution of Literary Types and Functions 

Among the types enumerated in the preceding chapter 
under ''the native mold of literary form," we have men- 
tioned the song and the mashal as especially congenial to 
the Hebrew mind.' These two types were the first to feel 
the stirring of the new spirit under the favoring conditions 
of the united kingdom, and the first to be molded and 
refined from the instinctive to the artistic. Under Solomon 
a differentiating and specializing process took place ; giving 
rise, in form, to various styles of song and mashal, and in 
content, to a fine adjustment of each type to its fitting sub- 
ject matter. The history of this process is obscure because 
we have only the finished books, published long afterward, 
to show for it ; but of its vigorous beginnings in the in- 
spiring times of Solomon, and of its cultural growth and 
ripening thereafter, we have no reason to doubt. 

In two distinct yet harmonious lines this evolution of 
the native literary types may be traced, as they become 
more familiarized in the thought, the worship, and the; 
education of the people. These lines extend respectively 
from the finer development of the song and the mashal. 



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AWAKING OF THE LITERARY SENSE 



The Lyric Strain, General and Sacred. The songs and 
fragments of song that up to the time of Solomon are 
quoted in the text of the history relate, to matters of public 
import, such as events in the nation's experience or in the 
lives of eminent men. It is to this fact, indeed, that we 
owe their preservation at all. To the individual emotions, 
such as are universal to all, there is less reference. Yet 
here is the very feeding ground of lyric poetry : the joys 
and sorrows of the home, the passions and aspirations of 
the heart, the common experiences of life, secular and 
sacred. It is to these, rather than to national affairs, that 
the new lyrical movement seems to have been directed. 

In the account of Solomon's literary versatility in 
I Kings iv, 29-34, we find him not alone but associated 
Of the Solo- with a group of men some of whose names are 
monic School given, all engaged in occupations of culture and 
learning. In other words, there is here given a glimpse of a 
Solomonic school, or fellowship, of which the king himself 
is the head and patron, sharing in the intellectual pursuits 
of his subjects. His own songs, the account says, were a 
thousand and five. It is not likely that he monopolized the 
lyrical activity; he was merely the leading spirit in a notable 
movement. Of its further history, or of works traceable to it, 
we have no subsequent account, except that two of the men 
here named, Ethan and Heman, are mentioned as the authors 
of Psalms, Ethan of Psa. Ixxxix, and Heman of Psa. Ixxxviii, 
and both are mentioned in i Chron. xv, 19, in the list of 
David's singers. In reading about Solomon's exploits in verse 
one cannot but recognize something of the amateur and crafts- 
man. His songs were not so truly the lyric passion wreaking 
itself out of a full heart on life, as they were exercises in lyric 
art, like the work of an enthusiastic student. They were not 
of Biblical theme or caliber, and so have not survived. 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

One specimen remains to us, however, of the work of 
this Solomonic school, which shows that these courtiers 
were engaged in something more than elegant trifling. It 
is the Scripture book entitled ' ' The Song of Songs, which 
is Solomon's." We' can neither ascribe nor deny it to 
Solomon himself, nor are there internal marks to deter- 
mine when it was written ; but of the Solomonic school of 
lyric art it claims by title to be the supreme product. It is 
a cycle of exquisite love poems, the only Scripture book, 
indeed, dealing with the theme of sexual mating and love. 
The cycle has been deemed a kind of masque or drama ; 
but a coherent plot or a consistent situation is hard to trace. 
There is, however, a noble consistency and beauty in the 
general spirit and sentiment of the book. Doubts have been 
expressed as to its fitting place in a Scripture canon ; but 
if the sexual relation, most common and potent of human 
passions, needs light and guidance from above, surely the 
Bible has a legitimate mission in dealing with it. And this 
Song of Solomon deals with the matter in a way not un- 
worthy of Biblical sanction. In reading it we have of course 
to realize that it comes to us from an Oriental . race and 
land, with its Asiatic imagery and atmosphere, and that its 
scene is a royal harem. Yet out of this equivocal environ- 
ment are drawn conceptions of beauty and sanity, which 
though richly sensuous are not at all sensual or salacious ; 
which portray love as a sacred and spiritual thing, and 
woman not as the slave or the plaything of" man but as 
an equal mate, who in her native purity and strength can 
hold her own personality inviolate against courts and kings. 
Thus we may rank the portrayal with the noblest modern 
ideals. Solomon had a harem which was his undoing 
(i Kings xi, i-8) ; Solomon's Song, whose heroine is a 
simple country girl sturdily loyal to her virgin love, makes 
the harem seem a base and paltry thing. And its net im- 
pression, refined by the matured lyric art, is that of a pure, 

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AWAKING OF THE LITERARY SENSE 

faithful, resolute love, on which lust and luxury have no 
power. Such a theme, which later times selected as the 
crowning lyric product of the Solomonic school, vindicates 
the high mission of literature, as it sets itself to put into 
order and beauty the common values of life. 

In the literary activity of Solomon and his court we have 
seen how poetry was cultivated by the higher and more 
Of the ' cultured classes, . and in what social and secular 
Davidic Stratum of sentiment it moved. But for the 

n uence people of all classes, with their common moral 
and religious needs, the field wa3 already preempted by the 
influence of David's poetical and musical gifts, and still 
more by the perpetuated power of his personality. Accord- 
ing to the compiler of the Books of Chronicles it was 
David who, as soon as he had brought up the ark from its 
wanderings to his newly won capital, organized the sanctu- 
ary ritual mainly as a service of song with orchestral accom- 
paniment (i Chron. xvi, 4-7), and who later conformed this 
organization by anticipation to the Temple which his son 
Solomon was to build (i Chron. xxv, 1-7). This account 
may be, as to details, the notion of a later historian read 
back into the past ; but what seems certain is that the soul 
of the Temple service, its spirit of worship and praise and 
confession, was a heritage not from Solomon the builder, 
whose tastes were quite other, but from his father David, 
the real founder of popular and centralized worship. In 
other words, the prevailing strain of the lyric art in Israel, 
deriving from the devout personality of David, was laid out 
on religious aspirations and themes. And the outcome is 
before us in the Book of Psalms, which from gradual growth 
into the hymn book of the Israelites has become, and beyond 
all other books remains, the hymn book of the world. 

Though in a narrow critical sense we cannot ascribe in- 
dividual Psalms with absolute certainty to David, in a more 
real and vital sense his personal stamp is upon the whole 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

psalm type. To him beyond any other person we owe it 
that song was turned into the rehgious channel, and that 
The Personal it became the utterance of the personal religious 
Keynote {[{q^ Thus from the beginning of the worship on 
Zion these Psalms were the main factor to make worship a 
thing of the heart rather than of external ritual or of mystic 
divination. It was a matter of direct individual communion 
with Jehovah, and available to . every common man. And 
tradition was not slow to recognize the personal source and 
manner of this lyric strain. This is quite evident in the 
titles appended to the Psalms. Of the Psalms attributed to 
him, thirteen are by title associated with particular events 
in his life, and eight of these with incidents in his early 
experience of enforced outlawry, when his personality came 
in closest touch with the people. In general too, in the 
transition that was taking place from a fierce and warlike 
age to an age of peace and prosperity, this power of per- 
sonality made David one of the most refining and civilizing 
agencies that the history of Israel ever knew. He became 
the kingly type to which the later Hebrew imagination re- 
verted, and on which was modeled the Messiah idea ; an 
idea which derives both from the man and from the spirit 
of the poetry of which he was the pioneer cultivator. 'His 
molding power over the mind and heart of his nation thus 
anticipated the truth of Fletcher of Saltoun's remark : "I 
knew a . very wise man that believed that if a man were 
permitted to make all the ballads, he need not care who 
should make the laws of a nation." 

Note. Davidic Psalms with Historical Headings. The following 
Psalms, all ascribed to David, are referred by the later added titles to 
events of his life, mostly verifiable from the history : 

Psalm iii. "A Psalm of David when he fled from Absalom his son." 
Cf. 2 Sam. XV, 13-18. 

Psalm vii. " Shiggaion of David, which he sang unto Jehovah con- 
cerning the words of Cush a Benjamite." 

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AWAKING OF THE LITERARY SENSE 

Psalm xviii. "A Psalm of David the servant of Jehovah, who spake 
unto Jehovah the words of this song in the day that Jehovah delivered 
him from the hand of all his enemies, and from the hand of Saul." 
Cf. 2 Sam. xxii. 

Psalm XXX. "A Psalm; a Song at the dedication of the house; a 
Psalm of David." 

Psalm xxxiv. " A Psalm of David ; when he changed his behaviour 
before Abimelech, who drove him away, and he departed." Cf. 
I Sam. xxi, 10-15. (Achish in i Sam.) 

Psalm 11. " A Psalm of David ; when Nathan the prophet came unto 
him, after he had gone in to Bath-sheba." Cf. 2 Sam. xii, 1-15. 

Psalm lii. " Maschil of David : when Doeg the Edomite came and 
told Saul, and said unto him, David is come to the house of Ahimelech." 
Cf. I Sam. xxii, 9. 

Psalm liv. " Maschil of David : when the Ziphites came and said to 
Saul, Doth not David hide himself with us? " Cf. i Sam. xxiii, 19. 

Psalm Ivi. "A Psalm of David: Michtam : when the Philistines 
took him in Oath." Cf. i Sam. xxi, 10, 11. 

Psalm Ivii. " A Psalm of David : Michtam : when he fled from Saul, 
in the cave." Cf. i Sam. xxii, i. 

Psalm lix. "A Psalm of David: Michtam: when Saul sent, and 
they watched the house to kill him." Cf. i Sam. xix, 11. 

Psalm Ix. " Michtam of David, to teach : when he strove with 
Aram-naharaim and with Aram-zobah, and Joab returned, and smote 
of Edom in the Valley of Salt twelve thousand." Cf. 2 Sam. viii, 3, 13. 

Psalm Ixiii. A Psalm of David, when he was in the wilderness of Judah. 

Psalm cxlii. '' Maschil of David, when he was in the cave ; a 
Prayer." Cf. i Sam. xxii, i ; xxiv, 3. 

A word about the permanent values of the Psalms may 

here be added. The collection has been called, too restrict- 

edly I think, '' the anthem-book of the second 

The Per- 

manentand Temple," — that is, of the Temple built after 
Universal ^-^g Jews' return from the Chaldean exile. Rather, 

Elements n • i ^ ■, - 

we may call it the sacred lyric accompaniment 
of the Hebrew life, both personal and national, from the 
time that David set up the tabernacle in Jerusalem till a 
century and a half before Christ. A deposit from all the 
ages of Israelite worship, these Psalms rise, many times out 
of special events or occasions ; but they contain permanent 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

elements which make them equally fitting when the specific 
occasion is forgotten. Or else the occasion, literal to begin 
with, becomes in course of time symbolic or allegorical ; so 
that succeeding generations can apply it as naturally to their 
own inner experience as if the concrete event had befallen 
them. It is the Hebrew poets' recognition of the truth 
enunciated by Goethe : 

S[t nur ein ©leidmi^. 

Thus the Psalms have done more than any other literature 
of the Bible to make the history of Israel symbolic, as if 
it were a divinely composed allegory or object lesson ; nor 
that only, but to create the whole religious dialect of suc- 
ceeding ages in terms of Hebrew thought and feeling. The 
lyrical genius of the psalmists converted the local and temporal 
situations of their experience into universal religious values. 

Note. Psahn Occasions. In this adaptation of particular occasions 
to devotional uses, partly because the poet had not the occasion but the 
lesson at heart, and partly because the psalms were subject to later re- 
visions, the occasions became so disguised that it is hard to identify 
them beyond doubt. Among the more likely ones we may instance : 
Psalm xxiii, which seems a reminiscence of David's youth and days of 
war ; Psalm xxiv, which seems to celebrate the bringing of the Ark 
either to Mount Zion, whither David transported it, or to Solomon's 
Temple; Psalm xlvi, which seems to have been composed on the occa- 
sion of building an aqueduct in the time of Hezekiah to conduct water 
into the city for time of siege ; Psalm cxxiv, which seems to celebrate 
the wonderful escape of Jerusalem from capture by Sennacherib ; and 
Psalm cxxxvii, which comes from the experience of the exiles in Baby- 
lon. In all these cases the Psalm is expressed in terms not merely of 
local but of such universal experience as all worshipers can avail 
themselves of and make their own. 

II 

The Wisdom Strain, and the Sages. It was not the cultiva- 
tion of the lyric that gave Solomon his chief claim to literary 
distinction, but the development of the mashal from the crude 

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AWAKING OF THE LITERARY SENSE 

form of the popular maxim or parable to a highly finished 
verse form, which was in course of time made the vehicle 
of a whole strain of didactic literature, called by later scholars 
the Wisdom literature. ^ Of this strain of literature the Book 
of Proverbs, which as we have seen is associated with Solo- 
mon, is the most typical product. In addition to this book 
the matured, literature of Wisdom contains the Books of Job 
and Ecclesiastes in the Hebrew canon, and in the Apocrypha 
the Book of Jesus Sirach, or Ecclesiasticus, and the Wisdom 
of Solomon. All this literary strain we may regard as the 
current of thought and instruction rising out of the cultiva- 
tion of the mashal and initiated by Solomon and the sages 
of his court. 

■ The sages do not seem to have been an official order, as 
were priests and prophets ; and it was only the king's par- 
ticipation in their work that gave them such immediate 
distinction and popularity. The practical usefulness of their 
work, however, was soon recognized as an educative factor. 
In course of time we may regard the cultivators of Wisdom 
as essentially schoolmasters and counselors, especially of the 
young ; men of age and ripe experience, who sat in the city 
gates and gave counsel in sententious precepts and figures, 
and who were revered for what they were rather than for 
their official station. By the prophet Ezekiel they are called 
''ancients" or ''elders" (Ezek. vii, 26). An idealized por- 
trayal of the venerable sage is drawn by Job, in his descrip- 
tion of himself as he was before his affliction (Job xxix, 7-25). 
The sages came eventually to be recognized as a kind of 
order or guild, coordinate in the national cultural agencies 
with priests and prophets. We see this indicated in a verse 
of Jeremiah, where the three orders with their functions are 
mentioned. " The law," say the men of Israel, " shall not 
perish from the priest, nor counsel from the wise, nor the 

^ For the mashal as represented in the native mold of literary form 
see above, pp. 64-72. 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

word from the prophet" (Jer. xviii, i8). To- the wise, or 
sages, is thus attributed specifically the giving of counsel ; 
a function inherited in later history by the scribes and rabbis. 
The word '' wisdom " means to the Hebrew much like the 
word " philosophy " to us. It was, however, philosophy of a 
Wisdom as quite different kind from ours, as befits the dif- 
to Substance ferent national and racial aptitude. It was not 
speculative or metaphysical, nor was it expressed in trains 
of reasoning. Uttered in the form of maxims or aphorisms, 
it concerned itself with matters of practical • sagacity and 
conduct : precepts for the management of life, with its 
everyday duties of industry, purity, temperance, prudence, 
open-mindedness, wisdom of speech and silence, and the 
like. It did not argue, it asserted; and its subject matter 
was such as could be affirmed without gainsaying. It was, 
in a word, the didactic literature of Israel ; and from the 
time of Solomon to Hezekiah we may regard it as the chief 
vehicle of education for the youth and the common people 
of the land. In the preface to the Book of Proverbs its 
object and audience are thus set forth : 

To know wisdom and instruction ; 
To discern the words of understanding ; 
To receive instruction in wise dealing, 
In righteousness and justice and equity ; 
To give prudence to the simple [or immature], 
To the young man knowledge and discretion : 
That the wise man may hear, and increase in learning ; 
And that the man of understanding may attain unto sound counsels : 
To understand a proverb, and a figure [or, an interpretation], 
s The words of the wise, and their dark sayings [or riddles] (i, 2-6). 

All this reflects its practical and in the good sense worldly 
fiber. It was indeed the primitive gospel of success, ex- 
pressed in terms of this world's conditions and affairs, and 
without professing to be, as prophecy avowed itself, a 
revelation from God. 

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AWAKING OF THE LITERARY SENSE 

In its devotion, however, to the principles which avail in 
social and industrial life. Wisdom never cut loose from or 
ignored religion. Its beginning, or positive principle, was 
taken as the fear of Jehovah, or, as we should say, reverence 
(Prov. i, 7) ; its principle of negation, departing from evil 
(Jobxxviii, 28). Thus it identified Wisdom values squarely 
with religious. To be wise was the same as to be righteous ; 
to be wicked was to be a fool. The unscrupulous qleverness or 
crookedness which grasps at immediate success is a delusion : 

There is a way which seemeth right unto a man ; 

But the end thereof are the ways of death (Prov. xiv, 12 ; xvi, 25). 

The wealth that one gains in dishonest ways has no life 
value ; the true guaranty of life is righteousness : 

Treasures of wickedness profit nothing ; 

But righteousness dehvereth from death (Prov. x, 2). 

It is not on superficial or opportunist motives that this phi- 
losophy of life is founded, but on the permanent elements 
of character ; not on acuteness of intellect alone but on 
loyalty to conscience : 

There are many devices in a man's heart : 

But the counsel of Jehovah, that shall stand (Prov. xix, 21). 

Through this practical moralizing on the active principles of 
life it came about that the ideal of righteousness, of strict 
loyalty to conscience, was ingrained in the Hebrew mind as 
its distinctive bent. We distinguish its racial genius by that ; 
just as beauty and clear thinking distinguished the Greeks, 
and order and system the Romans. The Hebrew education, 
as this body of the proverb literature reveals, was an educa- 
tion in conscience and practical good sense. 

As to form, the utterances of Hebrew Wisdom do not 
mind the distinctions that we draw between proverbs, par- 
ables, fables, allegories, apologues, and the like. All are alike 
mashals ; all use in some way the principle of comparison 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

or analogy ; and the term " mashal " covers a range from 
the most condensed maxim to a flowing and continuous 
Wisdom as ^^^^ of narrative, hke the parables of Jesus. The 
to Form element common to them is their didactic purpose, 
and their elucidation of spiritual truths by material facts and 
objects, or, as in the antithetic proverbs, of one spiritual 
truth by another. 

The main distinction of the Solomonic mashals, as to 
form, seems to be that they are detached lessons, not 
making up a system or continuity but each complete in 
itself ; expressed generally in the couplet, and not often 
extending beyond a quatrain. As the Wisdom literature 
becomes more developed and mature, however, there is a 
tendency to make the lesson longer, more flowing and more 
continuous ; in other words, to give more amplification and 
elucidation to the thought, while still the couplet remains 
the verse unit. It is thus that from detached counsels on 
life Wisdom in course of time becomes a coordinated phi- 
losophy. This is seen especially in the books of Job and 
Ecclesiastes, which are written in the non-Solomonic or con- 
tinuous mashal. How this differs from the Solomonic can 
be seen in several passages outside the Book of Proverbs ; 
for example, Balaam's oracles (Num. xxiii, xxiv) ; Job's 
discourses (Job xxvii, xxix) ; and two of the Psalms 
(Psa. xlix, Ixxviii). Isaiah also composed a passage in the 
later. mashal form (Isa. xxviii, 23-29). It was about in his 
time, probably, that the Wisdom literature was in greatest 
vogue among all classes of the people. 



[96] 



F 



CHAPTER III 

LOOKING BEFORE AND AFTER 
[Under the early kings of Judah and Israel, until cir. 783 B.C.] 
ROM the death of Solomon, which occurred about 



940 B.C., to the so-called literary prophets, about 
754 B.C., a period of nearly two centuries, the people 
of Israel were undergoing politically the varying fortunes 
of the two rival kingdoms into which the nation split as 
soon as Solomon's son Rehoboam came to the throne. 
The immediate occasion of the disruption was ascribed to 
Rehoboam 's insolent determination to perpetuate the des- 
potic rule of his father (i Kings xii, 1-15) ; but conditions 
were ripe for it, and it had been foreseen and sanctioned by 
prophecy while Solomon was yet alive (i Kings xi, 26-40). 
This political separation was in fact only the culmination 
of a rivalry which had from early times existed between 
southern and northern Israel ; a rivalry which centered in 
the two strongest tribes, Judah and Ephraim. Each of 
these tribes accordingly became the nucleus of a kingdom. 
The kingdom of Judah, or the southern kingdom, inherited 
the capital Jerusalem, the Temple with its religious traditions 
and worship, and the kingly dynasty from the heroic times 
of David. The kingdom of Ephraim, or the northern king- 
dom, was set up anew, with a capital shifting until Omri 
built Samaria ; with the worship not centralized at the capi- 
tal but carried on at various high places or local shrines, 
of which Bethel and Dan were the chief ; and with the 
royal dynasty frequently changed, generally by usurpation 
and assassination. 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

Notes, i. The Capitals of the Northern Kingdom. Jeroboam, 
the first king of Israel, chose Shechem (now Nablous) for his capital 
(I Kings xii, 25), a town not well situated for fortification or defense. 
A later king, Baasha,- who came to the kingdom by usurpation, began 
to build Ramah as a frontier capital against Judah (i Kings xv, 17), but 
on an invasion from Syria left off building Ramah and dwelt in Tirzah 
(I Kings XV, 21). This continued to be the capital until Omri built 
Samaria, which remained the capital until the kingdom was broken up 
(I Kings xvi, 24). 

2. The Centers of Worship. Jeroboam, on coming to the northern 
kingdom, soon perceived that it would not do to let his people go up to 
Jerusalem for pilgrimage and worship; so he caused images to be made 
and set up shrines at Bethel and Dan, at the south and the north of 
his kingdom, and also established centers of worship at other places 
( I Kings xii, 28-3 1 ). The corruptions of worship that came to characterize 
these places are denounced in Amos iv, 4. 

Of these two kingdoms Judah, retaining only two of' the 
twelve tribes (i Kings xi, 36) together with the priestly 
tribe of Levi, was the weaker in numbers and power, but 
the more organized and stable, retaining its autonomy nearly 
a century and a half longer ; its religious culture, too, being 
more centralized, was more defined and homogeneous. 
Ephraim, the northern kingdom, taking the general name 
of the kingdom of Israel, and comprising ten of the twelve 
tribes, was stronger, and more prosperous in wealth and 
agriculture and trade, having in fact a much more fertile 
and attractive territory ; but more exposed to the evils 
of foreign invasion, in closer contact with the idolatrous 
Canaanites, and in general of looser moral and religious 
character. 

I. One People in Two Kingdoms 

When, after the secession of the northern tribes, Reho- 
boam was minded to force them back by war, the word of 
a prophet came to him : '' Thus saith Jehovah, Ye shall 
not go up, nor fight against your brethren the children of 
Israel : return every man to his house ; for this thing is of 

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LOOKING BEFORE AND AFTER 

me" (I Kings xii, 24). A similar intimation of Jehovah's 
purpose had been given to Jeroboam, the first ruler of the 
northern kingdom, while Solomon was yet living (i Kings 
xi, 29-37). The political separation of the kingdoms was 
evidently of Jehovah's design : he had a larger mission and 
destiny for the Hebrew race than men could plan or see. 
But while the kingdoms were two states, often in rivalry 
and war with each other, they continued to be one people : 
one in the consciousness of ancestry and origin ; one in 
tribal affiliation ; one in religion and sense of the claims of 
righteousness. Their disunion was in fact only superficial, 
confined to matters of state polity and perhaps of religious 
orthodoxy ; while in all vital things they had not only the 
sense of brotherhood but of communal unlikeness to all the 
nations round about them. On this homogeneous character 
the prophets and sages could reckon ; to it they could 
appeal in matters of history and motive and destiny. 



Traits and Tendencies in the Two. The two centuries 
from the literary awakening in Solomon's time until the 
literary prophets begin their work may be regarded as a 
kind of melting-pot era, during which the racial and reli- 
gious idea is fused and shaped into a general conscious- 
ness of the nation's place in history and the world. The 
period coincides with the existence of the two kingdoms as 
unviolated states ; while each can realize its national idea 
and character, and before the shadow of invasion and over- 
throw comes upon it from the east. During this time the 
race's character and conscience are forming. The two 
kingdoms are becoming aware of the claims of their his- 
tory upon them : their ancestral faith, their peculiar herit- 
age of ideas, their noble roll of patriarchs and leaders, their 
God Jehovah and his intimate relations with them. All this 
is fostered by unnamed men of leading among them, sages 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

and teachers, whose work appears in the historical books 
from Genesis to Kings. Their Hterary activity during this 
period is thus in the way of racial and religious self- 
interpretation ; running back to times far beyond the be- 
ginnings of their political history, and down to spiritual 
depths beyond the reach of time and custom. 

When therefore toward the end of Israel's monarchical 
period the literary prophets began their work, they could 
appeal to a familiar fund of historical knowledge on the 
part of the people. The people's native aptitude for the 
parable and the folk tale had been well educated. They 
had come to know their history with its meanings so well 
that it could be relied upon as an incitement to conscience 
and a motive power in conduct. 

Note. The prophets are full of allusions to events of early history, 
not only the great outstanding events but the smaller ones, as well 
known ; showing that the people had been well instructed. One may 
instance, almost at random, Amos's reference to the conquest of the 
Amorites made by Joshua, Amos ii, 9 (cf. Josh, x, 12); Hosea's refer- 
ence to the destroyed cities Admah and Zeboiim, Hos. xi, 8 (cf. Gen. xiv, 
8); Micah's reference to Balaam, Mic. vi, 5 (cf. Num. xxii-xxiv); Isaiah's 
reference to campaigns by David and Joshua, Isa. xxviii, 21 (cf. 2 Sam. 
V, 20 ; Josh, x, 1 2). 

To this self-interpretation both kingdoms had contrib- 
uted ; and the resulting historical literature is a composite 
product. It is of some importance therefore to note how 
each of the two sections of Palestine was adapted to con- 
tribute its distinctive strain. 

Of the two rival kingdoms thus existing in close connec- 
tion, the northern one, the kingdom of Israel, was in all 
The North- worldly respects the stronger. It comprised all 
em Kingdom ^^g more fertile and populous parts of Palestine : 
the country around Shechem and Samaria, the fertile plain 
of Jezreel or Esdraelon, the region around the Sea of 
Galilee and northward, and the fine agricultural plateau 

[100] 



' LOOKING BEFORE AND AP^TER 

of Gilead beyond the Jordan. The people's pursuits were 
mainly agricultural ; and the common folk life was that 
of contented and prosperous farmers. All this tended to 
produce a sturdy and sterling type of civilization, but not 
a very high standard of religious culture. • 

There were other conditions, however, not so favorable 
to the homogeneous life thus connoted. The northern 
kingdom was in immediate contact with the neighbor king- 
doms of Syria and Phoenicia ; with which- realms it was in 
constant relations of war or intimate alliance. It was thus 
more in the current of the world's civilization, and tending 
to conform itself to the world's standards of worship and 
polity. The great caravan routes, too, between the two cen- 
ters of empire Egypt and Assyria, passing through the 
midst of Israel, brought the chances of trade to their doors, 
and furnished scope to the native Hebrew genius for 
business. All this, while it increased the nation's wealth, 
tended to produce luxury and arrogance, and those distinc- 
tions of classes wherein the rich could tyrannize over the 
poor and reduce them to virtual slavery ; a condition which 
the frequent disastrous wars aggravated. As is always the 
case, the higher civilization, along with its blessings, brought 
also its evils and vices ; and with these the nation's men of 
letters must reckon. 

The weaker kingdom of Judah, occupying the rugged 
hill-country from a few miles north of Jerusalem southward 
The Southern to Hebron and Beersheba, the 'slopes of the foot- 
Kingdom j-iiiis westward toward the Plain of Sharon and 
the Philistine country, and the wilderness eastward toward 
Jericho, Jordan, and the Dead Sea, had a land that could 
be made productive only by constant and wisely directed 
toil ; a land fitted mostly for the cultivation of the grape 
and the olive, and for the care of flocks. Thus the type of 
its civilization, apart from the capital, was rather pastoral 
than agricultural. Life was lived on a smaller and simpler 

[lOl] 



GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

scale than in the northern kingdom. Society, however, was 
more homogeneous, the fiber of the people's mind more 
narrow and intense, the national character more tenacious 
and hardy. Their hill-country was in a sense their protec- 
'tion from the agitations of the outer world. It was not so 
accessible nor so much coveted by enemie's ; and as long as 
the northern kingdom survived, Judah had this as a kind 
of buffer state between it and the great invading kingdoms. 

II 

Resultant Literary Situation. The literary awaking 
under Solomon, with the immediate impulse it gave to the 
cultivation of poetry and proverb, was not confined to these 
lines of literary culture. It was felt in every activity, and 
not least in the form which w^ould make use of the native 
genius for narration, namely, the historical. It is to the 
ages while the two kingdoms existed side by side — more 
specifically the ninth century B.C. — that we trace the 
transition from folk tales of heroism and adventure to 
motived and prophetic history, such as we now read in 
Genesis to Joshua. For this the times, with their great 
personal achievements so recent, furnished a positive inspi- 
ration. In the nation's evident guidance under Jehovah 
the men of insight felt that it had both a history and a 
hope worth recounting and cherishing. The two kingdoms 
were alike in this. With the same ancestry, the same God, 
and the same moral consciousness, they continued to think 
alike on all essential things ; and law, wisdom, and prophecy 
would be equally valid and binding for both. 

In the tone and standard of religious culture, however, 
there were differences between the two kingdoms ; whose 
Lines of effects we shall see in the utterances of the 
Cleavage literary prophets, but which may be felt also in 
the composite historical literature tracing its component 
elements to this period. 

[102] 



LOOKING BEFORE AND AFTER 

The southern kingdom, Judah, was the natural leader 
and pace setter in religious ideals. It had the city which 
David had made the metropolis of all Israel ; it had the 
Temple which Solomon had built, with the ancient ark of 
the covenant, and the organized priesthood and worship ; 
it had the royal dynasty of the Davidic house, on which 
had been pronounced the blessing and promise of Jehovah. 
It was in Judah, accordingly, that the racial and religious 
idea was evolved in greatest unity and purity ; in Judah 
that it would tend more to crystallize into the permanence 
and authority of a matured literature. At the same time, 
if Judah had a purer type of religious culture, it was apfe 
to be more intense and narrow, and so more intolerant 
and exclusive. Its influence would make rather for literary 
depth than breadth. 

The religion of the northern kingdom, Israel, was of a 
looser and more liberal type : less resolved to prescriptive 
tenets ; more open to the influence of heathen idolatries, 
especially from the allied kingdom of Phoenicia, and to the 
moral corruptions inherent in the Canaanite nature worship 
with which the people were in immediate contact. At the 
same time it was more tolerant and broad in its sympa- 
thies, less austere and exacting ; it doubtless learned good 
as well as evil from its neighbor religions. Religion in 
Israel was much more primitive than in Judah. Its stand- 
ards of law and worship were less defined. Even as late 
as the time of Elijah it had to decide between the claims 
of Jehovah and Baal (i Kings xviii, 21) ; and even to 
Elijah the idea that God would communicate with man by 
an audible voice instead of by some portent of nature was 
a discovery (i Kings xix, 11- 13). All this left the nation's 
character less deeply guarded against corrupting and de- 
basing influences ; and the national disintegration came 
earlier and more easily than in the kingdom of Judah. 

With this literary situation in mind, we are now to trace 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

the rise of the historical writing, and along with it the 
prophetic activity of the two centuries preceding the work 
of the literary prophets. This is what is meant by the 
heading of our chapter : Looking Before and After. 

II. Looking Before — Beginnings of Historical 

Writing 

We have already noted the fragments and remainders of 
primitive literature embedded in the first eight books of the 
Bible : pieces and passages from which we have deduced 
the native literary forms. Among these latter was reckoned 
Ihe folk story ; which, copiously represented in the com- 
pleted history, doubtless preserves much that was nearly 
contemporary with the events it narrates.^ We now take 
up the question of the history itself : not yet with refer- 
ence to its complete and fully articulated form, but more 
especially to note the order and stages in which it seems 
to have been written, and some things about the resultant 
character of it. 



Order of Historical Composition. The order in which 
the events of history were compiled and written does not 
correspond with the order in which they took place. It is 
more nearly the reverse. The earliest events, especially 
of primitive and prehistoric times, might well have been 
among the latest recounted. The selection and interpre- 
tation of them implies a maturity of historical reflection, 
which connotes an established and enlightened stage of 
society. The process of finding this order of composition 
is like tracing the history back, step by step, to its under- 
lying causes and motives ; which factors can only be under- 
stood as the effects have developed to a riper degree of 
religion and civilization. 

1 See above, p. 70. 
[104] 



LOOKING BEFORE AND AFTER 

We will trace this order of historical composition in 
three stages. 

Historical writing in this period would naturally begin 
with ■ the events that were most vivid and stirring in the 

The people's mind, and with the great personalities 

Events Near- through whom the nation had reached distinc- 
®® ^ ^° tion. These events would belong to the times 
of Solomon and David and Saul, the three great leaders of 
the united kingdom. In all the stories relating to these, 
and especially in those relating to David, there is a zest 
and freshness of treatment, an intimacy of huftian feeling, 
a sense of the moving elements of personality, which be- 
token that the history was written while the memory of 
these great men was still an« inspiring and molding power 
in the nation. We have seen how this personal influence 
and inwardness are reflected in the Davidic Psalms ; ^ in 
the annals that rtiake up a large part of i Samuel and 
all of 2 Samuel it is still more so. The substance of the 
account is too near its events to have become staled with 
age or literary formalism. 

It is in connection with the reign of David that the 
Chr6nicler, who in a later century wrote an ecclesiastical 
history of Judah, begins to name the persons who wrote 
the annals from which he derived his facts. As authori- 
ties for this period (i Chron. xxix, 29) he names Samuel 
the seer, Nathan the prophet, and Gad the seer. Samuel 
could not have contributed much to the biography of David, 
for he died while David was an outlaw fleeing from the 
fury of King Saul (i Sam. xxv, i) ; but for the life of. 
Saul, and for the obscure period between the Judges and 
the Kings, Samuel might well have been a principal author- 
ity. It would seem, then, that these stories of the early and 
united kingdom drew least from floating tradition ; nOr did 
they, like the history of the reigns succeeding Solomon's, 

1 See above, p. 82. 



GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

base themselves on court and temple archives. Their source 
was personal reminiscence and interpretation, by men en- 
dowed with prophetic insight. For the annals of Solomon's 
reign there is a curious blending of historical styles, indicat- 
ing, to my mind, the somewhat unpracticed historian. We 
have noted, on the one hand, the tone of childlike wonder 
in which the wisdom and wealth and splendor of Solomon 
are described ; ^ on the other, we note such a tendency to 
accumulate details and statistics of affairs of administration 
and building and trade as one sees on the inscribed monu- 
ments of th« Assyrian and Chaldean monarchs. ^ It is like 
a combination of earlier and later historical methods ; when 
dependence on oral and folk tradition is passing into depend- 
ence on documentary sources, ^nd when the ascendancy of 
the personal is passing. 

Going back along the stream of time, the next histories 
to be compiled would be the stories of the Judges, and of 

_, . the times of hardship and heroism during which 
of the Tribal the tribes were gaining a foothold in the land. 
Heroes becoming united in sentiment and worship, and 

advancing from anarchy to a degree of comity and tribal 
organization. In these histories the compilers would avail 
themselves of the folk tales that had gathered round the 
tribal heroes of old, and of legends that had accumulated 
at the local sanctuaries and sacred places. It was in these 
histories too, as we have seen, that fragments of ancient 
song and parable were incorporated as part of the his- 
torian's material. They go back to the times of the de- 
liverance from Egypt ; though in the earlier periods, as 
comprised in the books of Exodus and Numbers, the folk 
element shades off into a somewhat more legendary strain, 
of which we shall have later occasion to speak. 

The personal character portrayed in these histories of the 
Judges is such as is natural to a rude state of society. 

1 See above, p. 79. 

[106] 



LOOKING BEFORE AND AlFTER 

It is character actuated b}^ sirnple motives and passions ; 
and in religion cherishing very primitive notions of service 
and worship. No attempt is made to set up these heroes 
as models, or to extenuate their faults. Most of the stories 
come from the central and northern tribes, who in their 
pioneer state were in close contact with the more settled 
and prosperous Canaanites. Their chief danger lay in the 
tendency to absorb heathen customs, and to lose th*e severer 
moral tone of the service of Jehovah. Their hope of sur- 
vival and distinction as a race lay in their maintaining their 
covenant with Jehovah and being true to their heritage 
of ideas. All this is faithfully portrayed in the Book of 
Judges, the memorial of the rugged times before there 
was a king in Israel, when, as the account says, '' every 
man did that which was right in his own eyes " (Judg. 
xvii, 6 ; xxi, 25). 

The staple of these stories of the Judges consists of 
tribal and family traditions, such stories as would be 
preserved for their heroic interest. Being of the type 
of folk tale, they retain to a high degree the coloring 
of contemporary accounts ; though to the oral transmission 
a process of pruning and polishing supervened until they 
reached a stereotyped form suitable to be carried in memory. 
When the historians of our age found them, they added 
little if any literary shaping ; they merely arranged them 
according to their ideas of chronology, and supplied a 
framework of causes and motives. This framework is 
a naive and primitive formula of historic philosophy : given 
in the simple recurring statement that the Israelites did 
evil, in the sight of Jehovah and were oppressed; and that 
when they cried to him he raised up champions who de- 
livered them. The early chapters (i-iii) are predominantly 
of this epitome type. Then, for the body of the book, 
follow stories of the greater champions, — Barak, Gideon, 
Jephthah, Samson, — told not so much with reference to 

[i°7] 



GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

strict time succession as with reference to different sections 
and tribes. Hence it is difficult to construct from them 
a continuous history. The last four chapters are a kind 
of appendix giving two episodes of the days of anarchy. 
One relates the establishment of a sanctuary at Dan in 
the extreme north of Israel (xvii, xviii). The other gives 
the story of a certain outrage and feud which resulted in 
almost the entire extinction of the tribe of Benjamin, and 
the device, similar to the Roman rape of the Sabines, by 
which they were enabled to reinstate themselves (xix-xxi). 

The first five books of the Bible, called the Pentateuch, 
or Five Books of Moses, lie before us as a virtually con- 

g , tinuous story ; giving an account of the creation 

Occupation of the world and of man, of the origin and 
anaan , distribution of the various races of men ; then, 
beginning with Abraham, of the Hebrew race down to the 
death of Moses. To this modern scholars add as a kind 
of appendix the Book of Joshua, calling the whole the 
Hexateuch — this, however, for purposes rather of docu- 
mentary criticism than of literature. 

The story of these primitive times, legendary passing 
gradually into historic, is told with the skill and moving 
interest of a people with a native genius for narrative, but 
also with the didactic feeling of a people to whom religion 
is the chief concern of life. It is in this way that the 
coloring and motivation of this primeval history differs from 
the heroic tales of the Judges and the personal portrayal of 
the Kings. It has a strain of deeper and more developed 
religious values ; as if the stories were told not so much to 
give an account of primeval customs and family origins as 
to make an interpretation of the spiritual development of 
man. Accordingly there is no book of the Bible that has a 
richer religious and philosophical import even for modern 
thinking ; though of course this is v^rapped in a highly 
symbolic form. This feature of it becomes more marked 

[.08] 



LOOKING BEFORE AND AFTER 

as we get back toward the beginning of things : the stories 
of Eden, and Cain and Abel, and the Flood, and the Tower 
of Babel, are like an exposition by narrative of the native 
spirit of manhood. The stories of the Hebrew patriarchs, 
succeeding these, are perfectly individualized portrayals, 
and yet there is much of the type about them, as if they 
were intended to give the various attributes of the com- 
posite character as it develops from the family and re- 
ligious unit in Abraham. ^ 

Into the Pentateuch story as it goes along is incorporated 
much of a statistical nature. For the history of the patri- 
archal times this deals with matters of family and race, 
in the form of genealogies and names connected with race 
distribution ; in the Exodus and wilderness history, with 
the organization of the tribes, details of the tabernacle, 
itineraries, and the like. When the story comes to the 
giving of the law by Moses, not only is the account of it 
narrated, but the whole code of laws is appended, in 
several different collections, giving the impression of dif- 
ferent strata of legislative development. Besides these 
collections, in the fifth book (Deuteronomy) much of the 
law is repeated in the form of public discourses purporting 
to have been given to the people by Moses just before 
his death. 

II 

Two Main Lines of Source Story. It was long held that 
this Pentateuchal history was written by Moses, and that it 
was the oldest literature in the Bible. As soon as a more 
critical judgment is applied, however, it is seen that the 
history could have assumed its present form and maturity 
of interpretation only after Israel had reached a much more 
advanced condition of culture and civilization than they 
could have had in the primitive nomadic stage of Moses' 

1 See "The Genius of a Race," pp. 31 ff. above. 
[109] 



GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

leadership. The history is in fact composite ; its compo- 
nent elements reflecting differences of coloring due to 
different ages, and to the traditions and thought-habits of 
different sections of the country. 

It was not until after the Chaldean exile that the Penta- 
teuch was completed in its present inclusion and order. 
Of its component elements there were four main lines^ 
which we will here enumerate : the Jehovistic (J) ; the 
Elohistic (E) ; the Deuteronomic (D) ; and the Priestly (P). 
These lines, with some intermediate editing, were skillfully 
combined by the latest historians, so as to form in the 
main a continuous narrative. The latter two will come up 
for mention in their place ; we have to deal here merely 
with the first and second, originating in the early part of 
the monarchical period now under consideration, and con- 
taining the most vigorous and moving elements of the 
early history. 

The oldest stratum of story, and the one that has been 
used for the narrative basis of the whole patriarchal history, 
The jeho- is the so-callcd Jehovistic (Yahvistic) ; which 
vistic Source embodies, as is generally supposed, the tradi- 
tions current in the southern kingdom. It seems to have 
come from about the time of King Jehoshaphat, 874 to 
849 B.C. Containing, as a rule, the most charming and 
limpidly told of the early stories, it has the flow and real- 
istic vigor of the native folk tale, and doubtless derives 
largely from a still earlier oral source. The depth of its 
spiritual involvement, however, forbids our attributing it to 
a purely folk's origin. It must have come from cultivated 
teachers, who, though speaking in plain and as it were 
domestic terms, had a deep intuitional sense of human and 
divine values. The best account of the matter is that these 
J stories were composed for the catechetical instruction of 
the common people and the young. In their inception 
they were educational. The Israelites, as we know, attached 

[no] 



LOOKING BEFORE AND AFTER 

great importance to instruction of this kind. They were 
eager that all, from the humblest up, might be familiar 
with the knowledge of Jehovah and of the great names 
and events of the past (cf. Exod. xii, 26, 27 ; xiii, 14 ; 
Deut. vi, 6-9; Josh, iv, 21). 

Though oldest in point of composition, the Jehovistic line 
of story does not begin until Genesis ii, 4, where the 
detailed account of the creation of man begins ; the first 
chapter, from the later priestly source, dealing with the 
six days of the creation of the world. For two chapters, 
in designating Deity, it unites the two names Jehovah and 
Elohim (Authorized Version, Lord God) in one ; after that 
the simple name ''Jehovah" is used, though not rigor- 
ously. Thus in this Jehovistic source he is recognized as 
from the beginning the one God of mankind and first 
worshiped in the time of Adam's third son Seth (Gen. iv, 
26) ; though according to the Elohistic account the name 
'' Jehovah " was not known to Israel until the time of the 
deliverance from Egypt (Exod. vi, 2, 3). With the pre-, 
dominant use of this name goes a very intimate conception 
of the relations of Jehovah with men. He is represented 
as walking with them, talking face to face with them, 
eating and lodging with them ; and his acts, as connected 
with the creation, the flood, the confusion of tongues, the 
destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, are planned and 
carried out in very human ways. Thus the stories seem 
to reflect the artless conceptions of early conditions, as 
these had gradually shaped themselves by oral repetition 
into stereotyped narrative forms. It is -an indication of the 
later historians' fidelity to their sources, that these stories 
retain so much of their primitive character, though at the 
time when the history was compiled and unified the idea 
of God had grown so much more austere and remote. 

As there was a line of story in the southern kingdom, 
so in the northern ; and this was drawn upon by the later 



GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

compilers and worked in as a strand in the completed his- 
tory. It is called Elohistic, from Elohim, the older and more 
TheEiohistic general name of the Deity common to all the 
Source Semitic stock, to which name this line of story 

tended. It embodies traditions of the northern kingdom, as 
written supposedly about the time of Elisha, or somewhere 
from 850 to 800 B.C. In the completed history this line of 
story is not drawn upon so continuously, but rather to fill 
out and supplement the Jehovistic ; this probably because 
the two lines of story contained mostly identical traditions. 
The Elohistic line, which like the other derives from folk 
tradition, reflects a somewhat different coloring of religious 
thought ; not, however, discordant in principle. Its idea of 
God is less intimate, as befits a less personal concept of 
him ; he is represented not as friend and companion but as 
a Being whom men could apprehend only through angels 
and dreams and oracles. Beginning at Genesis xii, it com- 
prises material from no farther back than the common 
ancestor Abraham ; and from the time of Jacob it deals 
especially with the history of the northern tribes, giving its 
honors to those lines of ancestry rather than to the Judaic. 
The less intimate sense of Deity which characterizes the 
Elohistic story, and which we feel in the habitual use of 
the less personal name, may be due to the fact that its idea 
of God starts from natural forces rather than from human 
experience. With these two slightly different angles of 
view, it can be seen that the interweaving of Elohistic and 
Jehovistic elements enriches rather than distorts the united 
history. It gives solidity and contour, like the superimposed 
pictures of a stereoscopic view. 

Note. The Two Sources. The following brief characterization of 
the J and E documents is quoted from Professor Alexander R. Gordon, 
in H lb bert Journal^ Vol. IV, p. 164: 

The Jehovistic Source: " It is to this diCiQMVCvtw\.^ par exceUe?ice^ that 
the Book of Genesis owes its peculiar charm. It is distinguished for its 



LOOKING BEFORE AND AFTER 

delicate style and easy rhythmical flow of language, but above all for 
its delineation of character, and its insight into, and power of express- 
ing, subde shades of feeling and motives of conduct. It is also suffused 
throughout with a simple, fresh, and spontaneous religious spirit. Jah- 
veh is near to man. He comes down and walks and talks with him — 
almost like a brother-man. And the religious life consists essentially in 
the free, happy, almost visible walk of man with Jahveh." 

The Elohistic Source : '' This document, while still popular in spirit, 
is rather more stiff and formal in style. The language shows a distinct 
tendency to crystallize into literary forms, or mannerisms. The religious 
tone, too, is more reserved. We have no longer the free, happy walk 
of Jahveh with man. God dwells in some measure apart from men, and 
reveals himself, not by open word, but in dreams and by His angel." 



in 

How these were Supplemented. The data derived from 
another source, the so-called Priestly, though interpolated 
much later, may be considered here for the distinctive tone 
and coloring they impart to the text. It is in the contri- 
butions from this source that we feel the formal touch of 
the historian, as he thinks in terms of written and documen- 
tary records, as distinguished from the folk's consciousness 
thinking in terms of spoken and literary utterance. 

The material of this source represents rather the literature 
composed for permanence and record than that composed 
for common use and dissemination ; it is the original idea 
of the written as distinguished from the spoken style. ^ 
Composed under clerical and scribal auspices from the civic 
and Temple archives, it comprises a supplementary line of 
data designed to supply the chronological and genealogical 
backbone of the history ; to give statistics, formal details, 
measurements, and the like ; and to incorporate the statutes, 
civic, sanitary, and ritual, which had to do with the various 
usages, festival and liturgical, of the sanctuary. Its most dis- 
tinctive legal section is comprised in the Book of Leviticus, 

1 See above, p. 14. 
["3] 



GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

which . in its present form embodies the ecclesiastical code 
as observed in the second Temple. It reflects the conscious- 
ness of the priests and clergy to whom the religion has 
long been an established and organic system, and at a time 
when the nation, no longer independent as a state, had only 
the religious outlet for its thoughts and activities. 

Its thought of God is of a Being high and withdrawn 
from men, whose face none can see and live, and inter- 
course with whom is only by rites and forms. He is the 
God of creation and nature and history, rather than of the 
personal human experience ; hence the comparative remote- 
ness and austerity of the character ascribed to him. The 
general name ''Elohim" is used to designate him, until 
the history reaches the time of the deliverance from Egypt 
(see Exod. vi, 2, 3), when the distinctive national name 
"Jehovah" takes its place. The more formal and docu- 
mentary coloring of this source makes it comparatively 
easy to distinguish from the more flowing narrative of the 
rest. Whether any of it is earlier than the Chaldean exile 
is a matter of dispute ; " but at any rate its legal parts, as 
represented in the Book of Leviticus, are thought to be in 
their present form the work of Ezra the scribe, who came 
from Babylon to publish the law to the returned exiles at 
Jerusalem, in 458 b.c. (see Neh. viii, 1-3). 

Note. The Jehovistic (Jahvistic) narrative, as represented in the 
first eleven chapters of Genesis, is given by itself, detached from the 
Priestly, in Gordon, " Early Traditions of Genesis," pp. 233-241 ; and 
is followed by a secondary Jehovistic element (J ^), pp. 242-245. The 
Priestly document is detached and given, in its turn, pp. 245-255. 

IV 

Treatment of Myth and Legend. The modern way of 
getting at the origins of things is by study of the evidence 
furnished by geology, physical geography, climatology, and 
archaeological remains ; and of man, by ethnological study 

[114] 



LOOKING BEFORE AND AFTER 

of primitive customs as these exist in rude and uncivilized 
tribes to-day. The Bibhcal way is by taking the dim tradi- 
tions that have floated down by race memory from unknown 
times and interpreting these according to the historian's 
sense of human and divine nature. There are race mem- 
ories as well as individual ; and the things that these race 
memories perpetuate correspond to the stage of maturity 
which the people have reached when the impression is 
definite enough to assume meaning and historic or religious 
import. The race memory is thus analogous to the memory 
of a child ; which retains with great vividness things that 
come within the scope of child consciousness, and afterward 
gives them the interpretation which the relatively matured 
judgment of the adult can commend. The myths and tradi- 
tions which survive from the infancy of a race cannot be 
ignored. They must rather be treated as germinal truths 
and coordinated with the later and riper sense of things. 

For the account of the primitive ages before Abraham, 
as given in the first eleven chapters of Genesis, the writers 
The Prehis- draw upon a store of myths common to the vari- 
toricMyth qus branches of the Semitic stock, and in part 
accessible to us through the discovered remains of early 
Babylonian literature. They reproduce these myths, how- 
ever, in a kind of literary echo, refining them in the light 
of their purer religion, and fitting them to the end and pur- 
pose of their line of history. Thus the two sources, J and 
P, the one the earliest, the other the latest, make united use 
of such of this early material as is essential to their histori- 
cal scheme. These stories of the creation, of the primeval 
giants, of the flood, of the dispersion of races, are such sur- 
vivals from a remote past as any historian must needs reckon 
with, if only to deny them. The Hebrew historians do not 
deny them, but give them a more rational meaning ; much 
as we make use of Greek and Scandinavian myths for ex- 
pository purposes. In other words, into the outworn form, 

["5] 



GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

which fitted a cruder primitive conception, they put new 
values, corresponding to their juster ideas of divine and 
human nature. 

It seems not unhkely that while the early Jehovistic au- 
thors used stories that came in with Abraham, the Priestly 
source, written near the exile, revised its accounts by fresh 
reference to Chaldean traditions. 

The words ''myth" and "mythical," as applied to the 
pre-Abrahamic stratum of history, require a few words of 
explanation ; being terms that many are reluctant to apply 
to anything Biblical. ''We must keep in mind," says Pro- 
fessor A. R. Gordon,! "what myths really are. They are 
not frauds, nor even conscious inventions. They are simply 
primitive explanations of the universe — the ideas enter- 
tained by primitive peoples of how the world and man 
came to be. We might call them ' primitive philosophies 
of nature and religion.' ... In their essence all myths 
are religious." 

All nations have their peculiar ideas of their relation to 
God or the gods ; which ideas they reduce to the form not 
of logical demonstration but of story. Rhetorically we may 
call this process exposition by narration ; it is the literary 
vehicle best adapted to learned and unlearned alike.^ What 
coloring these myths take, in any nation, answers to the 
bent and temperament of the race that adopts or invents 
them. Thus we find in the Greek myths a distinctive trait 
of aesthetic beauty ; in the Latin myths a cold and unimagi- 
native hardness ; an element of wild brute strength in the 
Scandinavian ; of the fantastic and sensuous in the Arabian ; 
and of the magical and cruel, with entire lack of human 

•1 In Hibbert Journal, Vol. IV, p. 171. 
2 For Wisdom dealt with mortal powers, 
Where truth in closest words shall fail, 
When truth embodied in a tale 
Shall enter in at lowly doors. 

Tennyson, " In Memoriam," xxxvi. 

[116] 



LOOKING BEFORE AND AFTER 

reasonableness, in the myths of Assyria and Babylonia. 
Thus the myths reflect the character and genius of the 
people, and are shaped by their ideas of deity. 

In the hands of the Hebrew historians, who conceived 
of their God as a person like themselves and of their rela- 
tions with him as personal and reciprocal, these Semitic 
race-myths, which even in their developed Babylonian form 
are monstrous and corrupt, are transformed into symbolic 
stories in which the magical and fantastic are eliminated, 
and spiritual truths are involved which the ages since 
have not discarded or outgrown. Thus the myth takes on 
the elements of sane and reasonable manhood. 



Note. The Use of Myth. That the ancient and modern literary 
uses of myths were essentially alike may be seen by the following pas- 
sages, one from a modern author, the other a reference to the Bible. 

1. Modern Literary Use of a Myth. Carlyle, speaking of the Scan- 
dinavian myths (Hero-Worship, First Lecture), thus sets forth the in- 
forming spirit of one of them : " Consider only their primary my thus of 
the Creation. The Gods, having got the giant Ymer slain, a Giant 
made by ' warm wind,' and much confused work, out of the conflict of 
Frost and Fire, — determined on constructing a world with him. His 
blood made the Sea ; his flesh was the Land ; the Rocks his bones ; 
of his eyebrows they formed Asgard their God's-dwelling ; his skull 
was the great blue vault of Immensity, and the brains of it became the 
Clouds. What a Hyper-Brobdingnagian business ! Untamed Thought, 
great, giantlike, enormous ; to be tamed in due time into the compact 
greatness, not giantlike but godlike and stronger than gianthood, of the 
Shakespeares, the Goethes ! — Spiritually as well as bodily these men 
are our progenitors." 

2. Literary Use of Myth in the Bible. In Psalm Ixxxix, lo, and in 
Isa. li, 9, there are references to a mythical Rahab or monster-dragon, 
whom Jehovah slew; and in Job xxvi, 13, the same myth is mentioned. 
The reference in all the cases is literary ; that is, the matter is treated 
not as history but as we would use a story or situation from Beowulf 
or Sir Thomas Malory. The whole chapter of Job in which the refer- 
ence to Rahab occurs is a kind of parody or play on vague mythical 
elements, given by Job in ironical answer to Bildad ; see my " Epic of 
the Inner Life," pp. 268-271. 

["7] 



GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATORE 

Beginning with the illustrious progenitor Abraham and 
his family, the history from Genesis xii onward is compiled 
The Semi- ^om legends and traditions peculiar to the Abra- 
Historic hamic branch of the Semitic race. As all the 
®^®^ tribes of Israel trace to a common ancestry, the 

Elohistic line of story as well as the Jehovistic begins here 
to contribute to the narrative. 

The name ''legend," as well as the name ''myth," has 
offended some, who think that the use of the term throws 
discredit on the Bible stories, II needs therefore to be ex- 
plained ; and we may quote again from the author referred 
to above. "As to the real character of the legend," he 
says, "it is not history in the strict sense, for it cannot 
claim contemporary witness for its narratives. On the 
other hand, it is not myth. It is no pure creatign of the 
nation's consciousness, made to explain the universe. It is 
rather history surrounded with a halo of natural poetry — 
the traditional history of the nation in the poetic form it 
has assumed after passing for centuries through the fresh, 
creative national spirit. And this is really the reason why 
the stories of Genesis are so lifelike. For legendary fig- 
ures always appear strikingly lifelike, often more so than 
strictly historical figures." ^ 

"It is an accepted datum of scientific historians," the 
author further says, " that legend, as distinguished from 
myth, always contains a nucleus of historical fact." This 
may confidently be said of the stories of the patriarchs in 
Genesis, though we cannot separate the nucleus of literal 
fact from the legendary accretion. In narrating the lives of 
the great patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph, the 
historians have imparted to their account all the realism of 
biography, setting forth good and bad traits, strength and 
weakness alike ; with no attempt to make the character 
heroic, or to palliate faults. At the same time, however, 

1 A. R. Gordon, in Hibbert Jottr7tal, Vol. IV, p. 175. 
[..8] 



LOOKING BEFORE AND AFTER 

there is a strong typical or symbolic element in the por- 
trayal ; as if the person, besides being a historic individual, 
were an embodiment of the race's collective character in some 
specific relation. Thus Abraham is a personal embodiment 
of faith, the fundamental Hebrew motive power ; Isaac of the 
peaceful herdsman and pastoral proprietor, content in home 
and household ; Jacob-Israel, in his double nature the most 
masterly portrayal in existence of the typical Israelite, with his 
genius alike for the worldly and the spiritual ; Joseph, of the 
Hebrew as a man of authority and efficiency. It is as if the 
writers who portrayed these great figures of tradition were not 
only drawing on ancient facts but molding them unconsciously 
in their racial image. They were rounding out the legend by 
creating men after their inner ideal, and thus giving them a 
function in the prophetic destiny of the chosen race.^ 

A notable feature of these Genesis legends, evincing the 
keen historic sense of the Hebrew writers, is found in the 
stories which give the origin of the various nations and tribes 
related to the Hebrews. Some of these accounts are given 
in bald catalogue form ; as for instance the remarkable list 
of the descendants of Noah's sons in Genesis x, and the 
list of the descendants of Esau, or Edom, in Genesis xxxvi. 
Others, giving the origin of the Ishmaelites or .Arabians 
(Gen. xvi ; xxi, 8-21) and the origin of the Moabites and 
Ammonites (Gen. xix, 30-38), are given in the moving form 
of narrative. It is in these narratives, especially, that the 
affinity of the legend to history is evident. 

HI. Looking After — Beginnings of Literary 

Prophecy 

In all the early stories which the Hebrew historians 
gathered from antiquity there is a strong prophetic strain ; 
or as we might call it, a sense of tendency and purpose. 

1 See above, p. 33. For the legend, cf. further below, p. 280. 

["9] 



GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

This sense, in fact, inhered with the genius for history and 
its meanings which, as we have noted, was distinctive of the 
Hebrew mind.^ Even the primitive Jehovistic stories — of 
the loss of Eden, of Cain and Abel, of Noah's survival of 
the Flood ^ are as truly prophecies as histories, containing 
as they do elements of promise and outlook toward a high 
destiny for mankind. This prophetic strain becomes increas- 
ingly marked, alike in the J and the E sources, after Abra- 
•ham has made his great venture of faith and founded a 
family in the hope of becoming, through his posterity, a light 
and blessing to all the nations of the earth. 

It is this sense of future destinies which differentiates the 
Hebrew line of story from the myths and legends of other 
nations. Instead of a confused and motiveless past, such as 
these other legends reflect, the Hebrew historian deals with 
the '' dark backward and abysm of time " as with a history 
of which he possesses the secret ; and so those early myths, 
so odd and childish by other standards, become luminous 
and reasonable as links in a chain of prophetic progress. 
All this contributes to make the Bible, from beginning to 
end, the most forward-looking book in the world. *' These 
people have a secret," writes Matthew Arnold of the He- 
brews ; *' they have discerned the way the world was going, 
and therefore they have prevailed." 



Oracles Tribal and Racial. This prophetic strain is en- 
hanced by numerous passages of early literature, in the form 
of poetic oracles, which we find incorporated at the fitting 
places in the text of the history. These, tracing back to the 
primitive times when the family was the social unit, embody 
the hopes and presages connected with the promise made 
to Abraham and confirmed in increasingly specific terms to 

^ See above, pp. 37, 38. 
[120] 



LOOKING BEFORE AND AFTER 

his posterity. They relate to the destiny of famiUes, clans, 
tribes, and the whole nation ; recording, as it were, the 
state of the prophetic consciousness at the time and in the 
circumstances purported by them. It is uncertain how far 
these oracles are actually the words of the persons to whom 
they are attributed. In their present form they are probably 
later ; but at all events they are earlier than the completed 
text in which they occur, being incorporated from some an- 
cient source. It is in such oracles as these that formal and 
articulated prophecy begins ; and by these it is represented 
until the time of the literary prophets. 

Examples may be seen in the oracle given at the birth 
of Esau and Jacob (Gen. xxv, 23) ; the blessings pro- 
nounced later by their father Isaac on Jacob and Esau 
(Gen. xxvii, 27-29, 39, 40) ; the blessing pronounced by 
Jacob on his posterity when his sons had become the 
heads of clans (Gen. xlix, 2-27) ; and the blessing pro- 
nounced by Moses on the tribes when they, as constituent 
elements of a nation, were about to enter the promised 
land (Deut. xxxiii). All these are prophecies from the 
heart of the Hebrew people, embodying its sacred con- 
sciousness of the calling and destiny appointed for the 
heirs of Abraham's faith, as far as could be realized in 
that stage of their development. 

The most remarkable example, perhaps, of such early 

prophecy, remarkable because coming from a seer of alien 

. -, ^. race and religion, is seen in the oracles of 

A Testi- , 

moniaifrom Balaam, with the accompanying episode of his- 
Without ^^^y^ -j^ Numbers xxii to xxiv. These verses 
(mashals ,they are called) predict in glowing terms the mis- 
sion and fortunes of Israel, as seen by one to whom against 
his desire is vouchsafed a vision from Jehovah concerning 
this rival and hated people. Balaam has been hired to curse 
Israel ; but in spite of all his efforts he can only pronounce 
a blessing : 

[12.] 



GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

How shall I curse, whom God hath not cursed ? 

And how shall I defy, whom Jehovah hath not defied? . . . 

Lo, it is a people that dwelleth alone, 

And shall not be reckoned among the nations. . . 

Jehovah his God is with him, 

And the shout of a king is among them. . . 

I see him, but not now ; 

I behold him, but not nigh ; 

There shall come forth a star out of Jacob, 

And a sceptre shall rise out of Israel, 

And shall smite through the corners of Moab, 

And break down all the sons of tumult. 

Incidentally this strange Balaam episode reveals the rela- 
tively crude conception that heathen nations had of the 
nature of a Deityj and of the way to deal with his mind 
and will. For Balaam and the king Balak who has hired 
him to voodoo a nation find to their dismay that the God 
of that nation is one who cannot be bought, who cannot be 
fooled, who cannot be changed. 

God is not a man, that he should lie. 

Neither the son of man, that he should repent. 

This idea of the changeless self -consistency of God became, 
so to say, the axiom on which real prophecy, as distin- 
guished from divination, was founded. Divination thought 
of the divine will as something to be managed or bent to 
human purposes. Prophecy identified it rather with the 
most steadfast element of character, removing it thus from 
caprice or arbitrariness. It was a lesson only gradually 
learned, and by some costly experiences. In Saul's time, 
when the king would play fast and loose with God's bid- 
ding, Samuel had to tell him, almost in the ^ words of 
Balaam, '' And also the Strength of Israel will not lie nor 
repent ; for he is not a man, that he should repent " 
(I Sam. XV, 29). 

The oracles of this ancient seer Balaam, purporting to 
come from the eve of their entrance upon the land cf 

[122] 



LOOKING BEFORE AND AFTER 

Canaan, must have had great influence upon the subsequent 
hopes and principles of Israel. The story of Balaam was to 
late time one of the best known of their early traditions, and 
was used by later prophets as a warning and monition. 

Note. The following are the places in Scripture where the story of 
Balaam is referred to: Deut. xxiii, 4, 5; Josh, xxiv, 9, 10; Neh. xiii, 
2; Mic. vi, 5 ; 2 Pet. ii, 15; Jude 11. The Old Testament passages 
commemorate the turning of the curse into a blessing ; the New Testa- 
ment passages condemn the prophet rather for 'Moving the wages of 
wrong-doing," 

II 

Evolution of the Prophetic Order. In a general sense the 
prophet, or seer, was a familiar figure from earliest times. 
Moses, the nation's great founder and lawgiver, w-as called 
a prophet (Deut. xxxiv, 10), and predicted the coming of a 
successor like himself (Deut. xviii, 15) ; Deborah, who acted 
as champion and magistrate in Israel, was a prophetess 
(Judg. iv, 4) ; and soon after her time the visit of an un- 
named prophet is mentioned (Judg. vi, 8), who bids the 
people not to fear the gods of the Amorites, in whose 
land they dwell. 

The father of prophecy in its more distinctive sense, 
however, was Samuel, whose activities as judge, counselor, 
Th p • itive ^^^ king-maker were of great importance to 
Beginnings: Israel. It was through the influence of his stern 
Personal ^^^ sterling personality that the people were pre- 
pared to drop their tribal jealousies and become an organ- 
ized state ; it was by him also that the original constitution 
of the monarchy was determined (i Sam. x, 25). He was 
reared as an acolyte in the temple at Shiloh, having been 
consecrated to the priesthood by his mother (i Sam. i, 24 ; 
ii, 18, 19). While he was yet a child, and at a time when 
prophetic vision was rare (i Sam. iii, i), he received divine 
communications predicting the doom of the corrupt priest- 
hood (I Sam. iii, 10-14) ; and as a young man he was 

[ 123] 



GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

honored throughout Israel as a prophet of Jehovah (i Sam. 
iii, 19-iv, i). We next read of him as counseUng the peo- 
ple against taking up with strange gods (i Sam. vii, 3, 4), 
and as interceding for them in their weakness against 
the Philistines (i Sam. vii, 5-14). Not much more is ^told 
of him until he was an old man ; but it would seem that 
after the temple at Shiloh was broken up, so that there was 
no longer a main center for worship, sacrifice, and oracle, 
he made journeys about the land, ministering both as priest 
and prophet at various local sanctuaries in turn. Bethel, 
Gilgal, Mizpah, and his own birthplace Ramah (i Sam. 
vii, 15-17); and thus he spent a long and useful life of 
judgeship. 

He seems also to have been instrumental in forming, or 
at least sanctioning, bands of prophets, who perhaps dwelt at 
^^ „ . .^. the various sanctuaries and went about the country 

The Primitive J 

Beginnings: like modern dervishes (i Sam. x, 5, 6, 10, 11); 
Communal j^^ himself, howcver, was not identified with 
them. In the actions of these roving bands we get the most 
primitive idea of prophetic communication with supernatural 
powers. They seem to have induced a kind of ecstasy by 
means of music, and in that hypnotic state to have uttered 
emotional ejaculations which according to primitive ideas were 
supposed to be the voice of the deity within. They were 
probably disciples of Samuel, and like him zealous for the 
religious and patriotic welfare; but not having his breadth 
and poise of character, their emotions in their ill-disciplined 
personality got beyond the control of intellect and will, and 
expressed themselves in odd and unintelligible ways. Such 
phenomena are apt to occur in all primitive religions, and 
are by no means unknown in uncultivated communities in 
modern times. They represent a primal stage in the develop- 
ment of prophetic gifts, before prophecy had become so ame- 
nable to reason and intellect as to express itself in ordered 
literary utterance. Such trancelike performances were not 

[124] 



LOOKING BEFORE AND AFTER 

received with favor by the matter-of-fact IsraeHtes. Joshua 
would have suppressed an outbreak of prophecy in the camp 
in the wilderness ; but Moses, from his deeper spiritual in- 
sight, was more tolerant (Num. xi, 26-30). That they were 
not highly accounted of in Samuel's time, or received with- 
out doubts of their genuine relation to the mind of God, 
would seem to be indicated by the question asked of these 
dervish-prophets by a certain sceptic who noted their per- 
formance', ''And who is their father.?" (i Sam. x, 12). 
It was in fact instinctively felt from the beginning that 
prophecy must authenti-cate itself not only by mysterious 
tokens but by sanity and reason ; and its development was 
in that direction, with the crude and uncouth gradually 
disappearing and the thoughtful and self -controlled more 
evident, until it reached its culmination in the work of 
the great literary prophets. 

The prophetic order was a development from an earlier 
and more primitive institution. In connection with Samuel, 
Grades of ^^^ ^^^^ ^^ distinctive function and character, 
Prophetic the remark was made : " Beforetime in Israel, 
* ® when a man went to inquire of God, thus he 

said, ' Come, and let us go to the seer ' ; for he that is now 
called a prophet was beforetime called a seer" (i Sam. ix, 
9). A seer {roeh) seems in early times to have been a 
man who by some means of divination would get signs for 
future ventures in war, or for the recovery of lost property ; 
receiving for his services a fee. That was the idea that 
Saul and his servant had of Samuel, when Saul's asses 
were lost (i Sam. ix, 6-8). He was regarded as a kind of 
fortune teller ; and such men were numerous in all nations. 
A somewhat higher class of such interrogators of the future 
or of the occult went by the name of Gazer {Jioseh). Such 
were attached to kings' courts as counselors, who by 
employing some clairvoyant method gave advice for under- 
takings in war or affairs of state. (See 2 Sam. xxiv, 11.) 



GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

Both of these orders, however, seem to have become 
obsolete, and their methods discredited, with the coming of 
the true prophet ; who was called by a name signifying a 
''spokesman " {nabt) ; that is, of Jehovah. In the nabi', or 
spokesman, the order of prophets first reached the dignity, 
wisdom, and authority worthy of the high name of prophet. 
Samuel, whom his contemporaries called the seer, had a 
personality too great to be measured by divination and 
fortune telling ; and this was so felt by the people that 
a more honorable name must be given him. '' Jehovah was 
with him," the historian relates, '' and did let none of his 
words fall to the ground. And all Israel from Dan even 
to Beersheba knew that Samuel was established to be a 
prophet of Jehovah" (i Sam. iii, 19, 20). 

These different ranks were not sharply discriminated ; 
and more than one kind of prophetic gift might be united 
in one person. Gad, King David's gazer, also ranked as 
a prophet or spokesman for Jehovah (2 Sam. xxiv, 11). 
It is worthy of note that to all the men called prophets 
in David's time is attributed both statesman and literary 
activity. Samuel wrote '* the manner of the kingdom " in 
a book (i Sam. x, 25) ; and a later historian attributes 
written annals to Samuel, Nathan, and Gad (i Chron. 
xxix, 29). From the time when the name '' nabi' " was 
first given, it would thus seem, the prophetic order was 
associated with literature. 

We speak of the prophetic order, as if there were 
something official or established about it. And indeed 
we find accounts of companies of prophets, who were 
ready for professional employment, and whose words re- 
flected the general level of public opinion or desire, or 
perhaps the endeavor to please their employers. A remark- 
able example of this is reported in the prophecies uttered 
before the kings Ahab and Jehoshaphat before the cam- 
paign against Ramoth-Gilead (i Kings xxii, 5-23). This, 

[126] 



LOOKING BEFORE AND AFTER 

however, was not favorable to spokesmanship for One 
whose ''thoughts are not as men's thoughts " (cf. Isa. Iv, 8), 
Accordingly we find that prophets of the highest type, 
those who have suffered for their message, have not 
allowed themselves such partnership. They have refused 
to prophesy for hire or* reward, and sometimes have dis- 
claimed professionalism (cf, Amos vii, 12-14; Zech. xiii, 
4, 5). This they have done in the conviction that the 
word of Jehovah through them must be free, and they 
be beholden to no man. A fee or reward seemed to 
them like a bribe, and so far forth a restraint upon their 
conscience. Hence they held themselves independent of 
kings' courts, or money, or ' perfunctory duties, that they 
might be accountable to no one but Jehovah.. And many 
times their reward was martyrdom or imprisonment. 

Among the various lines of social and cultural activity 
in Israel we need to distinguish the specific function tacitly 
The Pr h- ^^ ^^^ ofiicially accorded to the prophets. Theirs 
et's Specific was a function independent of the temporary 
unction expediencies or vicissitudes of state ; unmind- 
ful of social conventions or public opinion ; claiming justifi- 
cation only by its single-minded fidelity to a larger and 
more spiritual vision. They were indeed the nation's men 
of insight and foresight. Their authorizing formula was, 
'' Thus saith Jehovah " ; and they must abide the issue of 
their message, whether one of weal or woe. 

This function of the prophets sets them apart from the 
everyday affairs of the people ; which indeed were well 
cared for. For the ordinary educative work of life, and 
for the affairs of industry and society, the people had the 
counsels of their sages, which developed into the Wisdom 
literature ; they had the stories of their popular historians, 
which we have noted in the Jehovistic and Elohistic strata 
of the early history ; they had the legal decisions of magis- 
trates and priests, which we shall see later codified in a 

[127] 



GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

fund of sacred and statute law ; they had the poetry and 
Hturgical services of the Temple and local sanctuaries. With 
these domestic matters the prophets did not concern them- 
selves, except to keep the people's conscience true to the 
principles underlying them, as a means to the integrity of 
their national character and mission. They were rather the 
men for the care of the large movements, crises, emer- 
gencies of the nation ; for meeting the crucial points of 
history and policy, when the issue was between man's w^ay 
and God's way, and when national faith, honor, and integ- 
rity were at stake. In brief, the prophets were the divinely 
called men by whom Israel's large national movements were 
interpreted and determined. 

Accordingly, we find the earlier prophets appearing when 
a monarchy was to be set up (i Sam. x, 17-27) ; when 
the royal succession was to be determined, (i Sam. xvi, 
I— 13 ; I Kings i, 22— 30) ; when a division of the kingdom 
was decreed (i Kings xi, 29-39) \ when the nation's supreme 
religious allegiance was at stake (i Kings xviii, 21—39); 
when dynasties were to be changed (2 Kings viii, 7-15). 
Thus, it would seem, the specific function of the great 
prophets was to make known Jehovah's mind concerning 
Israel's mission and destiny ; to correct the tendencies that 
unfitted the people to meet their future strongly and vic- 
toriously ; and to enlighten them in the principles that 
guarantee a noble destiny. All this we may sum up in a 
word, by saying, the prophets were the enlightened con- 
science of the nation. They made mistakes, as all men 
do ; and sometimes their policies must bring disaster in 
immediate results in order to secure a larger and more 
permanent good. Though at the forefront of affairs, yet 
after all they were only the next step ahead, themselves 
undergoing education in Jehovah's word and will, with their 
spiritual horizon broadening as they went along. On the 
whole their vision was clear for the portion of the field in 

[128] 



LOOKING BEFORE AND AFTER 

which they worked ; they could be sure of the consistent- 
direction of affairs if not of their ultimate goal ; and their 
allegiance to the God whose spokesmen they were was 
sincere and unbought. 

Ill 

Era of Prophetic Masters and Guilds. What is here 
said of the prophet's specific function applies preeminently 
to the greater prophets, who represent prophecy in its more 
momentous import for the future, and of whom only one 
or two would be active in a generation. By the weight of 
their message and personality they were natural leaders, 
"powers behind the throne," with whom both king and 
people must reckon. Intimately associated with the affairs 
and policies of the state, they were to a decisive extent 
determinators of its destiny. Such was Samuel, who, as 
we have seen, was the father of the prophetic order and 
the founder of the united kingdom (i Sam. viii, xii). Such 
was Nathan, the eonfirmer of the dynasty to King David 
(2 Sam. vii), the fearless denouncer of the king in the 
latter's sad lapse into adultery and treachery (2 Sam. xii, 
1-15), and the means of perpetuating the dynasty in the 
line of Solomon (i Kings i, 11-31). 

To these original leaders may be added, on a somewhat 
lower plane, Ahijah the Shilonite, who encouraged the 
revolutionary ambition of Jeroboam I (i Kings xi, 29-39), 
and later cut off the succession (i Kings xiv, 1-18) ; Jehu 
the son of Hanani, who prophesied similarly to the wicked 
King Baasha (i Kings xvi, 1-4); and Micaiah the son of 
Imlah, who incurred imprisonment for prophesying truly but 
unfavorably, in opposition to a company of false prophets 
(i Kings xxii, 5-28). These, and more that might be 
mentioned (e.g. i Kings xiii ; xx, 35-43), were prophets 
not for national leadership but for special crises and 
occasions. 

[129] 



. GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

To Samuel and Nathan, whose work was done in the 
pre-hterary times, fell a large share of that personal as- 
Eiijah and cendancy which, as we have seen,^ was the 
Eiisha natural inspiration and support of the people 

befoie the age of books. After the literary awaking under 
Solomon personal ascendancy does not seem to have counted 
for so much in the southern kingdom, its place being in- 
creasingly taken by the ideas embodied in the songs and 
proverbs which the psalmists and sages so readily made, 
into an educative agency. In the northern kingdom, how- 
ever, away from the literary centers, the era of undiffused 
thought lasted longer, and the need of personal guidance 
and ascendancy was correspondingly protracted. It was in 
this kingdom of Israel that most of the early prophetic 
work was done, and that by the itinerant and personal 
method which the career of Samuel has made familiar. 
Among the men who thus worked for the welfare of the 
northern kingdom, two names stand out preeminent, the 
names Elijah and Eiisha. The stories dealing with them, 
which begin with the seventeenth chapter of i Kings and 
extend to the thirteenth chapter of 2 Kings, are told in 
the familiar folk's style, quite differently from the prevail- 
ing annalistic accounts in which they are embedded ; and 
probably were derived not from documents but from the 
oral traditions of the prophetic schools which as we know 
were a feature of the times. 

Each of the two great prophets, whose characters were in 
quite marked contrast, fitted providentially into his time and 
mission. Elijah, the stern ascetic, through his services in 
committing the northern realm at a time* of great peril to 
the exclusive worship of Jehovah, and through his champion- 
ship of the plain people against the king's arbitrary " despo- 
tism, became the traditional type of the prophet, Jehovah's 

^ Compare what is said about personal ascendancy, its good, and the 
lack it leaves ; see above, pp. 72-76. 

[130] 



LOOKING BEFORE AND AFTER 

spokesman and herald, later reproduced in John the Baptist 
(cf. Mai. iv, 5 ; Matt, xi, 14), Elisha, more a man of the 
people and less austere, dwelling among them as a person 
to be consulted by king and common man alike, was a 
politician-prophet who, though mainly true to high ideals, 
was not without a certain shiftiness and subtlety in the 
affairs of state, and indeed was the contriver of the bloody 
revolution under Jehu which in the end cost the kingdom 
dear. Of both these prophets miracles are reported ; a fact 
which betokens a relatively . raw and unreflective state of 
society, into which spiritual ideas had found small entrance. 
In the Hebrew idiom a disciple or follower is called 
a son. The sons of the prophets were such disciples. 
The Sons of They seem to have acted as servants or agents 
the Prophets Qf ^^g greater prophets (cf. 2 Kings ix, 1-3); 
not giving original prophecies on their own account, but 
learning the mind of the great seers and propagating their 
religious and patriotic warnings among the people. We 
first hear of companies of prophets in the time of Samuel, 
when they seem to have been connected with the sanctu- 
aries, and to have been in some way under the direction 
of Samuel (i Sam. x, 5, 10). The first use of the term 
''sons of the prophets" occurs in the time of King Ahab 
(i Kings XX, 35-43), when a certain one of their number 
by a symbolic act reproved the king for his clemency in 
sparing his enemy the king of Syria. At that time they 
seem to have been a recognized class or guild (cf. 2 Kings 
ii, 3, 5), like itinerant or cloistered friars, who subsisted 
probably by the people's alms. We hear most about them 
in the time of Elisha ; when they seem to have lived 
together in communities of their own (cf. 2 Kings vi, 1-7), 
to have worn a distinctive badge or mark (cf . i Kings xx, 
38, 41), or perhaps a monkish costume (cf. Zech. xiii, 4), 
and to have been cognizant of the great prophets' move- 
ments. Wives of such sons of the prophets are mentioned 

■ [131] 



GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL* LITERATURE 

(cf. 2 Kings iv, i) ; so they were not required to be celi- 
bates. They were not highly rated by the upper classes 
(cf. 2 Kings ix, ii) ; and their primitive ways of inducing 
the prophetic frenzy fell into disrepute as prophecy took on 
more the sanity of ordered literary utterance (Jer. xxix, 26 ; 
Hos. ix, 7). In the times before prophecy became liter- 
ary, however, and especially among uncultivated people, 
the order of the sons of the prophets doubtless served a 
useful purpose. 



[132] 



CHAPTER IV 

THE STRESS OF PROPHECY 

[The eighth century till 701 B.C.] 

WITH the coming of the hterary prophets, of whom 
the earhest that can be dated was Amos (about 
754 B.C.), the unique Hebrew institution of prophecy came 
to its most distinctive mission, and through a period of about 
two and a half centuries ran a very significant course in his- 
tory. The first half century of this time, until 701 e.g., for 
reasons which will appear, may be regarded as a period of 
stress, in which prophetic insight and foresight is approach- 
ing, for both kingdoms, a great crisis, the crisis of national 
dissolution and exile. During this period the northern king- 
dom went under (in 722 B.C.) ; while Judah, the southern 
kingdom, was for a time delivered, its exile not coming 
until 586 B.C., more than a century later. The surviving 
kingdom, however, did not go unscathed. By the Assyrian 
encroachments and invasions until 701 it passed through 
an experience of menace and suspense second only to actual 
overthrow. It was by a miraculous deliverance that Judali 
was temporarily relieved and the faith of prophecy vindicated ; 
and the sudden event by which this was brought about ranks 
as one of the most notable epochs in the nation's history. 

This period of prophetic stress we may regard, in the 
large, as a time during which the strenuous business of the 
prophets was to prepare both kingdoms for their doom, and 
for their worthy survival of it. The prophets mainly con- 
cerned in this were : Amos and Hosea for the northern 
kingdom, and Micah and Isaiah for the southern. 

[ ^33] 



GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

I. The Impending Crisis 

Up to the death of EHsha the activities of the prophets, 
though concerned with the nation rather than with the in- 
dividual, were directed mainly to its domestic affairs : with 
its succession of kings, as in the case of Samuel, Nathan, 
Ahijah, and others ; with the purity of its worship, as in 
the case of Elijah ; and with its relations to the neighboring 
kingdom of Syria, as in the case of Elisha. It will be noted, 
too, that prophetic activity, when once the kingdom was 
split in two, was' confined to the northern kingdom. The 
reason for this seems to be that the northern kingdom, 
being less fixed and organized in its religious and moral 
ideals, had correspondingly more need of the personal in- 
fluence of the prophets, giving it warnings and directions as 
it were from hand to mouth ; while in Judah the temple, 
with its priests, psalmists, and scholars, was far more com- 
mitted to the steadying and enlightening influence of law 
and literature, making personal labors to a degree super- 
fluous.^ Prophets were men for crises and emergencies ; and 
with these junctures, so long as they remained domestic, 
the southern kingdom, having a more deeply founded civil, 
social, and religious organization, was better fitted by its in- 
herent resources to cope. 

A great crisis was impending, however, which would draw 
the nation out of its parish and provincial ideas ; which soon 
after the death of Elisha began to attract the attention of 
thoughtful statesmen ; and which called forth the utmost of 
prophetic insight and foresight, in both kingdoms, to cope 
with. Israel, hitherto a secluded and self-centered nation, 
must henceforth reckon with the great powers of the world. 
To understand this, and the scope of it, we must consider 
the momentous world movement that the nation was des- 
tined to encounter. 

1 Cf. above, p. 130. 
['34] 



THE STRESS OF PROPHECY 



The Broad Historical Situation. It was just when the 
great miUtary empire of Assyria began to move in its career 
of world conquest that the hterary prophets, who were men 
of larger than local caliber, began their work with the Hebrew 
people. That work was addressed first to home interests ; but 
it always had a* world background, in the implicit conscious- 
ness that Jehovah, as God of heaven and earth, was shaping 
the mysterious events of history to His purpose. The broad 
situation of things, and Israel's relation thereto, comes pro- 
gressively into view, as the prophetic era advances. 

Up to the eighth century before Christ the ancient civili- 
zations, which were of Semitic stock and centered in the 
Mesopotamian plains and uplands, could hardly be called 
empires, in the sense of united and organized governments. 
The political genius was not their gift. They were loose 
agglomerations of tribes, held together only by military force 
and despotism; tribes with discordant passions and interests, 
each petty province or city with its local god, and each 
larger state having a pantheon of jealous and quarreling 
deities. In all their strifes with each other the powers 
and fortunes of the gods were involved, with those of the 
people, sharing with them in victory or defeat. Deities were 
honored or despised according to their prowess in wars or 
raids, and .according to their caprice in sending or with- 
holding fruitful seasons. Such was the prevailing religious 
consciousness of those times. 

Of these ancient civilizations Chaldea, with* its capital at 
Babylon, was the oldest and most highly cultured ; a kind 
of recognized arbitress of the thought and learning of the 
eastern world. ^ At the opening of our era, however, Assyria, 
farther up the great rivers, which was a daughter state of 

1 This seems to be implied in Isaiah's oracle against Babylon ; see 
especially Isa. xiv, 4 (" exactress," margin) ; and xiv, 12-14, 

[13s] 



GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

Chaldea and a worshiper of the same deities, was in the 
ascendant ; being strongest and most aggressive in mihtary 
conquest. Its capital was at Nineveh. It has been described 
as " the most brutal empire which was ever suffered to roll 
its force across the world." ^ 

It was with this arrogant military empire, from about 
745 B.C., when Tiglath Pileser IV began to reign, that the 
little states around the eastern end of the Mediterranean 
Sea, Israel among them, had to reckon ; the Assyrian hosts 
coming, in successive raids of conquest, devastating, ravag- 
ing, extorting tribute, or deporting whole communities and 
peoples, until, outside of Egypt, the Assyrian empire was 
virtually master of the ancient world. It was not a power 
to civilize, but to subjugate, and to enrich itself with booty 
and slaves. 

All this looks, from one point of view, like a meaningless 
chaos of brute force and heartless greed. Such perhaps was 
Its Developed its only conscious motive. Not so, however, did 
Meaning ^\^q prophets regard it ; nor can we so interpret 
it, in the broader historical light which later ages shed upon 
it. It was rather the beginning of a vast world movement 
toward unity, toward concentrated and organized power, and 
so toward such stable and homogeneous government as could 
be the field for a progressive and enlightened civilization. 
As such it was as truly Jehovah's work as was his local 
preparation in Israel. He had a purpose for civilization as 
well as for religion ; and as this was by degrees disclosed 
the prophets realized increasingly that he was rising as in 
wrath to '' db his work, his strange work, and bring to pass 
his act, his strange act" (Isa. xxviii, 21). 

The vigorous but ferocious empire of Assyria had its day ; 
and was followed in course of time by the more humane and 
cultured empire of Chaldea ; and this in turn, under the con- 
quests of Cyrus, by the more austere sway of Medo-Persia. 

1 G. A. Smith, " Book of the Twelve Prophets," Vol. II, p. 91. 

[136] 



THE STRESS OF PROPHECY 

Under this latter regime the Aryan race, with its genius for 
civiHzation, took the helm of world-empire from the Semitic 
hands hitherto in control ; the same imperial dominance 
that through the Greeks and Romans, also of Aryan stock, 
and their modern successors, has continued to this day the 
chief civilizing power of the world. 

It was just during this colossal shift of empire from 
Semitic to Aryan hands that the Hebrew era of literary 
The Hebrew prophecy lasted, and that the people of Israel 
Contribution underwent their strange fortune of exile, disper- 
sion, and return. Their destiny was to be not that of a vic- 
torious but of a tributary and subject people; to be absorbed, 
like other peoples, in the huge melting-pot of tribes and 
cults. Not like other peoples, however, were they to lose 
their identity, or the sacred religious trust which they had 
inherited from their fathers. From a very early period of 
their history they had possessed the oracle pronounced upon 
them by Balaam (Num. xxiii, 9) : 

Lo, it is a people that dwelleth alone, 

And shall not be reckoned among the nations ; 

and whatever vicissitudes of worldly lot they passed through, 
though it were the extreme of oppression and dispersion, 
that distinctiveness and independence of character must re- 
main intact. It was to promote this — to define and purge 
and purify it — that the great prophets began, as it w^ere 
instinctively, to work, as soon as the peril of invasion began 
to be foreseen. It was their w^ay of making their people 
ready for their fate ; fortifying them not by walls and ram- 
parts but by character. And when the stress came, a sterling 
character, an enlightened conscience, was their contribution 
to the welter of the times. 



[137] • 



GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

II 

Rising to the Occasion. As the nation thus approaches 
the crisis of its destiny, it is well to note how the literary 
method of the great prophets conforms to the large situa- 
tion. Prophecy, as a type of literary utterance, has a style of 
its own, quite different from that of the historians and sages, 
and eminently adapted to its sublime object and mission. 

Note. The Prophetic Style. Professor Gardiner, in " The Bible as 
English Literature," p. 209, thus describes it : 

*' Of all the writings in the [English] Bible these oracles of the 
prophets are the most foreign and the least like anything that we have 
in modern literature : as they appear here they belong to a vanished 
past. Men are still born who have glimpses of the everlasting verities" 
to communicate to other men ; but they deliver them in forms wholly 
different. The prophet of the Old Testament was at once preacher and 
statesman, seer of visions and guide in the affairs of the nation, reformer 
of religion, moralist, and poet. The prophecies contain deliverances on 
all subjects, from new revelations of the nature of Jehovah to the practical 
questions of tithes or the keeping of the Sabbath. Yet through them 
all ... , the normal form is poetical, and they all show the parallelism 
of the Hebrew poetry." 

As regards its form, the prophetic style has the rhythmical 
swing of impassioned address. Its verse structure, if such 
we may call it, is not so lyrical as that of the Psalms ; not 
so condensed in phrasing as that of the Proverbs and Job. 
It bears much the same relation to the more metrical types 
of poetry that dramatic blank verse like Shakespeare's bears 
to lyric and heroic verse like Wordsworth's or Pope's. 
Some analogy to it is furnished by the rhythmical and yet 
not measured roll of high oratory, like Webster's or Burke's. 
In other words, it is the style naturally evolved in a nation 
gifted with the poetry of passion, when a speaker conscious 
that he is dealing with the most momentous issues of life 
puts into his utterance (essentially oral) the whole energy of 
his emotion, his imagination, and his idealized thinking. 

• [138] 



THE STRESS OF PROPHECY 

It is its transcendent point of view, and scale of treat- 
ment, the high issues with which it deals, and the imagery 
Identification ^^^ atmosphere thus occasioned, which make 
withjeho- the prophetic style sound so foreign to modern 
vah's Mind ^^^^^ ^^^ prophets themselves maintain that they 
are bringing to men the actual words of Deity. '' Thus saith 
Jehovah" is the distinctive prophetic formula. They are not 
without a sense of what this means for scope, dignity, sub- 
limity, and power of language. They must indeed put their 
thoughts in '' matter-moulded forms of speech " ; but they 
are consciously expressing God's thought and presuming 
to rniake Him speak in character. It is a felt interfusion of 
divine and human mind ; and therefore subject, style, and 
point of view must be befitting to so high a source and 
copartnership. To work in the feeling that they were 
responsible spokesmen of the Being who . 

formeth the mountains, and createth the winds, 
And declareth unto man what is his thought ^ 

must have been, however we view the result, the most tre- 
mendous literary enterprise ever undertaken by man. And 
the thought of Jehovah, dealing with earthly and human 
affairs as their Creator and Controller sees them, must 
needs be strange unless the writer and reader can in a 
degree raise themselves to' the same point of view. 

The habitually recognized sphere of Jehovah's will and 
work is not limited in time and space. This presupposition 
Attitude to- ^^ ^^^ literary prophets becomes increasingly clear 
wardNatu- to them as their work goes on. Jehovah's word 
rai Forces -^ ]3j-Qug]^^ indeed to a particular chosen nation, 
and is adapted to a particular situation ; but its field of 
operation is the whole unbounded world of nature and man. 
This seems to be recognized in the constantly used term 
''Jehovah of Hosts," the prophetic title ascribed to God, 

1 Amos iv, 13. 
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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

For lo, he that formeth the mountains, and createth the wind, 

And declareth unto man what is his thought ; 

That maketh the morning darkness, 

And treadeth upon the high places of the earth, — 

Jehovah, the God of hosts, is his name ; ^ — 

wherein it is left undefined whether His '' hosts " are the 
hosts of heaven, the forces of nature, or the armies of men. 
It is a comprehensive term for whatever agency, natural or 
spiritual, works His purpose in the world. 

Hence the great natural forces, not deified as by the 
heathen, nor distributed among various wills as by poly- 
theists, are rather Jehovah's ways of speaking to men and 
thereby revealing warnings and directions for human life. 
They are not blind or occult forces, such as men invoke by 
divination, but the reasonable work of a single mind and a 
justifiable purpose ; hence consistent with themselves and 
meant for the comprehension of men (see Amos iii, 3-8). 

A notable feature of the prophetic utterance, therefore, 
is the immense part that nature plays. The prophets are 
the earliest and greatest poets of nature. Not only the 
violent and exceptional forces, seemingly so arbitrary and 
unguided, — such as earthquake, volcanic fires, destructive 
storms, blight and locusts, devouring worms, pestilence 
(see, for example, Joel i, 2-ii, 14; Amos iv, 6-13; vii, 1-9), 
— but the regular and beneficent powers too, the fruitful 
round of seasons, the gentle influences of sun and rain, the 
response of nature to cultivation (see, for example, Hos. ii, 
8-23 ; Isa. V, 1-7), -are eloquent of Jehovah's will and pur- 
pose. The mind of God is thus felt as intimately inwoven 
with nature, making its aspects the reflection of the spiritual 
condition of men ; so that in the more highly wrought pas- 
sages nature is prophesied as smiling and fertile, or barren 
and desolate, according to the prevailing spirit that actuates 
the inhabitants. 

^ Amos iv, 13. 
[140] 



THE STRESS OF PROPHECY 

Note. See, for instance, Isa. xi, 6-9, where all venomous reptiles 
and beasts of prey are figured as in peaceful harmony with the wise 
and beneficent sway of the '' shoot out of the stock of Jesse," — a state 
of things repeated in Isa. Ixv, 25 ; see also Isa. xxxiv, 8-15, where utter 
desolation and barrenness are predicated of a land (Edom) wherein blood 
feud and the spirit of cruelty hold sway. 

In the world of human affairs, Hkewise, where are devas- 
tating wars and mysterious movements of empire, Jehovah 
Attitude is Still the Director and Wielder, choosing and 
toidcanttove- "^^"^ his fitting agencies, making men's small 
ments purposes work out his great one. All this comes 

to light in a gradually enlarging view, of which all the 
prophets are in greater or less degree aware. The brutal 
Assyrian power, coming upon Israel so resistlessly, is inter- 
preted and limited as an instrument of Jehovah's purpose 
(Isa. X, 5-19 ; xxxvii, 28, 29) ; the limits of Nebuchad- 
nezzar's power, under whom the people of the kingdom 
of Judah were subdued and carried into exile, are predicted 
and bounded (Jer. li, 34, 44) ; the later more humane and 
civilizing function of Cyrus is approved and supported (Isa. 
xliv, 28-xlv, 7). In a word, the prophets are conforming 
their thought and imagery not to the provincial scale 
of Palestine but to the universal scale of the world. As 
prophecy goes on, too, it becomes as limitless in time as in 
space. It forecasts a range and height of conditions which 
must needs require all history and all time to make eternal 
(Isa. ii, 2-4; Ixv, 17-25). 

As the message of the prophets was rather to nations 
than to individuals, their conception of character is in the 
Large Units absolute and in the mass, — a whole nation's traits 
of Character ^t once. The nation or race, with the large re- 
sultant of its inherited and cultivated traits, was its unit of 
character ; its fortunes and destiny those of an organic com- 
munity. The religious and moral principles inculcated are 
indeed the same for individual and nation ; but it is with 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

the kind of nation that the sum of individual traits pro- 
duces, the whole nation as it were a solidarity and com- 
posite personality, that the prophets are concerned. The 
Hebrew. race's survival and mission in the large movements 
of the times, accordingly, depend on their character and 
stamina as a people educated in Jehovah's ways and 
molded morally to his will. 

This solidarity of. estimate holds for other nations as 
truly as for Israel. The various nations by whom they were 
surrounded, with the type of character impressed on them 
by history and culture, were to the prophets like persons 
in a great world drama. They were individualized and 
judged accordingly ; much as in modern thought we esti- 
mate the French or Teutonic or Celtic type of character. 
There was Moab with its aristocratic pride ; Edom with its 
heartless inhumanity ; Tyre with its trafficking commercial 
spirit ; Assyria with its brutal arrogance ; Babylonia with 
the '' exactress " spirit of its ancient culture ; Egypt with 
its craftiness and its inefficiency. All these were organic 
communal forces which Jehovah was wielding to his will 
and purpose. The prophets were keen and penetrative stu- 
dents of their neighbor nationalities, and knew their heredi- 
tary and developed traits. A considerable proportion of the 
work of the three leading literary prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah, 
and Ezekiel, is devoted to oracles on the nations (Isa. xiii- 
xxiii ; Jer.» xlvi-li ; Ezek. xxv-xxxii) ; their fate, with that 
of Israel, being also a matter of intimate concern to Jehovah. 
Even Amos the herdsman prophet, in the beginning of the 
era of prophetic stress, shows his acquaintance with national 
origins, and scores their sins against humanity as one who 
has followed their history and temperament (Amos ix, 7 ; 
i, 3-ii, 8). 

In the midst of these nations, its destiny vitally inwoven 
with theirs, the little Hebrew nation must needs maintain 
its own racial type of culture and character intact, so that it 

[142] 



THE STRESS OF PROPHECY 

can hold its own and fulfill its unique mission in the move- 
ment of the ages. To this object the prophets, in singleness 
The Hebrew ^^ Spirit and aim, conform their warnings and 
Fidelity to promises. They have for Israel an ideal of com- 
^^® munal integrity, of civic and social righteousness ; 

which ideal must be held clear and strong before the people, 
and to which they must be brought back from all their per- 
verseness and errors. As their standard of life was higher 
than that of any other nation, so it was of corresponding 
moment that they be held sternly to it, in order to be, as 
a prophet expresses it, ''an ensign of the peoples" (see 
Isa. xi, lO, 12 ; xlix, 22 ; Ixii, 10). 

Hence the prophets' prevailing tone of rebuke and judg- 
ment. As we read their utterances superficially, reproof and 
correction seems the dominating note ; and the boon held 
out to the people is not that of glory and ascendancy in the 
earth but of penitence and return to Jehovah. In their view, 
as Israel must evolve a type of character for the spiritual 
uses of the world, so this must be correspondingly thorough 
and morally sound. ''You only have I known of all the 
families of the earth," was Jehovah's word to them through 
Amos ; " therefore I will visit upon you all your iniquities " 
(Amos iii, 2). 

Ill 

The Forecast in Joel. From these general considerations 
of the prophetic style we return now to the historic and 
prophetic situation with which the literary prophets deal. 
As we have seen, they are working in the dim presage of 
an impending world movement, in which Israel is to play 
a momentous though hidden part. As preparation for this, 
the nation must pass through a searching ordeal : must suffer 
from invasions and cruel wrongs on the part of the stronger 
nations, must experience the break-up of their state and the 
evils of exile, must endure outrage of injustice which will 

[•43] 



GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

seem to make their allegiance to Jehovah a futile thing. 
Yet out of it all will come some destiny nobler than could 
otherwise be (cf. Hab. i, 5). The prophetic foresight of this 
strange experience comes but gradually, each successive 
prophet having a presage only of the next stage ; but along 
with this progress of prophecy comes by degrees the sense 
that it is to be not only an' ordeal to be weathered but an 
opportunity to be seized and turned to good. It takes a long 
period of prophetic education to forecast and interpret the 
successive stages of this national experience ; each prophet 
contributing his share as fitting the existing situation. 

One prophet there is, however, who, taking occasion of 
a destructive scourge of nature, announces that ''the day 
of Jehovah is at hand," and draws a presage of the larger 
design of God, from the mysterious present judgment to 
the divine purpose far beyond. It is the prophet Joel. We 
know nothing of him, except that he is called "Joel, the 
son of Pethuel " ; nor of the date of his book. The opinion 
of critics is divided as to whether he is the earliest or the 
latest of the literary prophets, the majority holding that he 
is late. My opinion is that he is the earliest of them ; that 
he was a native of the kingdom of Judah, prophesying a 
few years before Amos. The purport of his message is 
the same, whatever period we assign him to ; but it seems 
better to fit the times soon after the death of Elisha. He 
is a kind of herald prophet, who in brief outline gives, so 
to say, a broad program of Jehovah's progressive design in 
the momentous crisis now impending. 

A tremendous plague of locusts, such as the oldest in- 
habitants have never seen or heard of, has ravaged the 
The Locust land, destroying all the vegetation, so that even 
Scourge ^j^g offering of grains and fruits for the Temple 
fails. The prophet uses this as the cue of his message ; 
describing in realistic details the widespread desolation and 
distress it has wrought, and calling on the priests of the 

[144] 



THE STRESS OF PROPHECY 

Temple to gather the people for fasting and lamentation. 
From the situation of unrelieved woe thus occasioned, he 
goes on in the second chapter to reveal its meanings : it is the 
sign of the day of Jehovah, "great and very terrible" (ii, 1 1). 
The locust invasion is then described realistically, but with 
details which apply to invading armies as well as locusts ; 
thus intimating in what way Israel's trial is to come. It is 
a veiled prediction of the coming of Assyrian hosts, who 
had already made repeated invasions of pillage and conquest 
as far west as Damascus, and had laid many of the smaller 
kingdoms under tribute. The plague of locusts, coming at 
this time, thus gave realism to a calamity which a political 
as well as spiritual insight would see must sooner or later 
fall upon Jehovah's people. 

From this attitude of unrelieved dejection the prophet 
makes a brave transition to a tone of hopefulness and 
The Contrite promise. With an exhortation to his people to 
Response turn to Jehovah in sincere penitence, '' rending 
their hearts and not their garments" (ii, 13), he bids them 
make trial of his disposition of mercy, to see if he will 
not turn away the evil. From this experimental stage he 
passes to a confident tone of promise, predicting a later 
restoration of fruitfulness and plenty, in which '' the north- 
erner " (ii, 20) ^ will be removed far off, and the people, the 
losses from the locust scourge fully made up, will no longer 
be a reproach among the nations. It is a description of the 
first stage in a truly spiritual service of Jehovah, and its 
immediate result. A greater result, however, is yet to come. 
After the people are reinstated in the joy of restored com- 
fort and prosperity, there will come an era of spiritual new 
energy in which all classes will share ; ''your sons and your 
daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, 

1 It will be noted that the word " army," being in italics, indicates thus 
that it is supplied by the translators ; the word " northern," in fact, stands 
alone, implying any scourge that comes by way of the north ; cf. Jer. i, 14. 

['45] 



GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

• 

your young men shall see visions : and also upon the serv- 
ants and upon the handmaids in those days will I pour 
out my Spirit " (ii, 28, 29). This prophecy, it will be re- 
membered, was cited by St. Peter as coming to fulfillment 
at Pentecost after the ascension of Jesus (Acts ii, 16-18). 
Such is the inner enlightenment and strength by which the 
prophet will fortify his people to bear the portents of the 
day of Jehovah ; and a deliverance will be provided for 
those who call on him, ''and among the remnant those 
whom Jehovah doth call" (ii, 32). 

Then, after Israel has received its destined spiritual quick- 
ening and energy, will come a time of reckoning, when all 
The Valley the nations that have ravaged Israel will be gath- 
of Decision Q^cd together in the valley of Jehoshaphat, called 
poetically ''the valley of decision." Here they shall know 
of Jehovah's will and of his avenging might ; and as they 
see his gracious favor to his own chosen people, shall see 
also how their violent and heartless deeds recoil on their 
own heads. It is the earliest prophetic prediction of a 
general judgment of the world, — a prediction that belongs 
to the kind of prophecy called apocalyptic. The nations are 
called upon to prepare for this decisive judgment as if for 
war, bringing forth their best wisdom and courage to meet 
the divine ordeal. " Beat your plowshares into swords," the 
prophet bids them, " and your pruning hooks into spears ; 
let the weak sayj I am strong" (iii, 10). At this early 
stage of world prophecy the prophet's vision is only broad 
enough to see the world tested by war ; but the time of 
more peaceful outlook will soon come, when this proverb 
will be reversed, and the implements of war will be turned 
into implements of husbandry (see Isa. ii, 4 ; Mic. iv, 3). 

Thus in this preliminary prophecy of Joel is mapped out 
in comprehensive terms a kind of chart of the trying expe- 
rience soon to come, and of the large purpose of Jehovah. 
The prophecy is uttered in Judah, where are the Temple and 

[146] 



THE STRESS OF PROPHECY 

the ordained rites of communal worship ; but hke all the 
prophets he thinks of all Israel, in its relation to Jehovah, 
as one undivided family. The prophecy is unusual in that it 
does not meet the people with an invective against their 
sins ; it is expressed in terms of pity and mercy. 

Notes, i. The Date of Joel. It is the more prevalent opinion at 
present that Joel is late among the prophets, being, as is thought, about 
contemporary with Malachi (dr. 500 B.C.). The opinion is founded on 
considerations which seem to me inctnclusive. From the general tone 
of the prophetic and apocalyptic ideas, and from the relation of his 
ideas to the larger situation of the prophetic era, it seems to me rather 
that he is the pioneer of the Hterary prophets. 

2, Apocalyptic Elements in Joel. The word " apocalyptic," from the 
Greek apokalupsis^ '"revelation," "disclosure," is a terni used by scholars 
to denote that strain of prophecy which deals with the final aspects of 
coming events, like the coming of a golden age, or a time of judgment, 
or the disclosure of heaven ; prophecy without definite reference to 
conditioning circumstances, and without concrete predictions of histori- 
cal events. The typical apocalyptic book of the Old Testament is the 
Book of Daniel, which is largely made up of visions, under- symbolic 
forms, of" a coming kingdom of heaven. The Book of Revelation, 
sometimes called the Apocalypse, is a New Testament book in the 
same vein, and employing some of Daniel's imagery. All the prophets, 
however, have passages in the apocalyptic consciousness; it belongs to 
the natural enlargement of their spiritual sense beyond the crises and 
events of their own immediate time. Instances of such passages may 
be found in Joel iii, 14-17 ; Isa. ii, 2-4, and the parallel to this latter, 
Mic. iv, 1-3; Isa. Ixv, 17; Ixvi, 22-24. 



n. In the Northern Kingdom 

Ever since the secession of the ten tribes under Jeroboam I 
(933 B.C.), prophetic activity had been more prevalent in the 
northern kingdom than in the southern. Samuel, the father 
of the prophetic order, was of the northern tribe of Ephraim 
(I Sam.-i, I). The so-called ''sons of the prophets " (that 
is, disciples of: th& "prophets) are mentio'ned only: in con- 
nection with the affairs of the northern kingdom. In that 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

kingdom also, besides the minor prophetic persons who 
came with special errands, lived the great personages Elijah 
and Elisha. 

The reason why the prophets were more active in the 
northern kingdom than in the southern was because they 
were more needed there. Conditions were more primitive. 
Religion and education were less organized and stable ; 
principles of belief and conduct less defined and developed. 
In the southern kingdom were the temple worship, cen- 
tralized in Jerusalem, the established priesthood, and the 
state under the dynasty of the house of David constitu- 
tionally committed to the pure service of Jehovah ; and 
hence the people in general had a more established order 
of ideas to go by. In the northern kingdom, on the other 
hand, as ideas were less defined and diffused, more depend- 
ence had to be placed on direct personal guidance ; which 
the prophets supplied as national emergencies arose, and 
which the sons of the prophets did much to maintain.^ " 

The work of these prophetic masters and disciples, mold- 
ing the people's mind in loyalty to Jehovah and cultivating 
an educated conscience to which later prophets could appeal, 
was of untold importance. By their personal educative 
work they prepared the soil, so to say, for the word of the 
literary prophets ; which came to them on the eve of their 
greatest crisis, a few years before their kingdom was broken 
up by exile and foreign dominance. 

I 

AmoS) and his Prophecy of Judgment. It was not from 
their own prophets, however, that the first prophetic warn- 
ing came to the northern kingdom. It would seem that 
their own prophetic order had become so much a perfunc- 
tory and time-serving thing, so subservient to the corrupt 
public* sentiment; that no warning which reproved the 

1 See above, pp. 129-132. 

[.48] 



THE STRESS OF PROPHECY 

nation's iniquity could have any acceptance (cf. Amos v, lo ; 
vii, 12, 13 ; Hos. iv, 5 ; ix, 7, 8). Prophets and priests 
ahke were as bad as the people (cf. Hos. iv, 6, 9) ; and the 
people themselves, in this prosperous reign of Jeroboam H, 
were at ease and heedless in civic corruption and sensual 
life (Amos vi, 1-6 ; cf. Isaiah's later description, Isa. xxviii, 
1-8). So the word of warning and denunciation must needs 
come from outside ; and it came from the neighbor kingdom 
of Judah, where the moral standards were higher and more 
authoritative, and where the name '' Zion " still counted as 
a spiritual center for the word of Jehovah (Amos i, 2 ; cf. 
Joel iii, 16). 

This warning, which was first given orally, we have as it 
was afterward written out, in what is called, " The words 
of Amos, who was among the herdsmen of Tekoa, which 
he saw concerning Israel " (Amos i, i). Tekoa was an out- 
lying town, or rather region, on the hills of Judah, about 
twelve miles south of Jerusalem. Amos does not come offi- 
cially, as if sent by his government or its priests (vii, 14, 
15) ; for he represents that Judah itself is involved in the 
same apostate tendencies, and has little right to dictate 
(ii, 4, 5). Still, the word he brings is identified with 
Jerusalem, the recognized spiritual capital of all Israel 
(cf. Jer. XXV, 30, 31), whence judgment is decreed for 
all nations. 

Amos's prophecy dates from about 754 b.c, some twenty- 
eight years before the fall of the northern kingdom. The 
„. . _ specific note of time given is '' two years before 
ancein the earthquake" (Amos i, i), a disaster which 

^®*^®^ was long remembered for its severity (see Zech. 

xiv, 5), but which apparently was not taken as a warning 
from Jehovah (cf. Isa. ix, 9, 10). The prophecy came just 
when both Israel and Judah were at the height of the great- 
est prosperity they had ever enjoyed. Thus it was like Hght- 
ning from a clear sky, uttered while the Assyrian danger 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

was still so remote that Amos himself did not give its spe- 
cific name, but warned the people that Jehovah would cause 
them ''to go into captivity beyond Damascus" (v, 27). 

His sudden appearance, apparently on a festal occasion, 
in Bethel, the royal sanctuary town of Israel, was rather 
sensational, and must have seemed rude and uncouth to 
the gay crowds, as the appearance of Elijah had been a cen- 
tury before. But when, after predicting that the sanctuaries 
would be; laid waste (vii, 9), he went on to say that Jehovah 
would ''rise up against the house of Jeroboam with the 
sword," he was reported to the king by Amaziah the priest 
of Bethel as a conspirator, and with rude words sent back 
to his own land (vii, 10- 13). Thus the prophecy which as 
oral preaching was interrupted and scorned had to be pre- 
served by writing ; and we have it as a literary production, 
written several years afterward. 

In thus coming over from the sister kingdom and warn- 
ing Israel, Amos disclaims connection with any organization 
His Prophetic which can either support or modify his word 
Credentials (yii, 1 4). He is not of the order of the prophets, 
either as leader or disciple. He is not, as his hearers inti- 
mate, prophesying for hire or for a living (vii, 12). He is 
not beholden to king or government or man. His call and 
message are immediately from Jehovah. As a herdsman 
and fruit cultivator he has gathered his convictions on the 
rugged hills of Tekoa, in immediate communion with nature 
(cf . V, 7, 8), and in meditation on the history of his and 
surrounding peoples (cf. i, ii, ix, 7) and on the movements 
of empire. His prophecy shows a remarkable breadth of 
outlook and depth of insight, as- well as purity and vigor 
of language ; an evidence of the culture to which a man of 
the people could attain in this age of the Hebrew state. 
It throws light also on the mind of the great prophets as 
a class. They were men who, in their intimate realization 
of Jehovah's nature and will, felt also his purpose in the 

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THE STRESS OF PROPHECY 

spiritual pulse-beat of humanity and their own nation's 
relation thereto (iii, i-8). 

The tone of Amos's prophecy is stern and denunciatory. 
He inveighs against the prevalent heartlessness, injustice, 
Hi Indict- ^^^ Sensuality which are sapping the character 
mentand of the nation (v, 10-13 ; viii, 4-7) : the greed, 
Presage dishonesty, and cruelty of the powerful classes 
on the one hand ; the shameless debauchery of the luxurious 
classes on the other (vi, 1-8) ; and hints what a contrast 
this is to the old heroic days (ii, 6-12). With such corrup- 
tion of morals all their elaborateness of ritual and formal 
worship is worse than worthless before Jehovah (v, 21^27), 
is abomination to him ; and the coming day of Jehovah, 
which is to this day as effect to cause, will be darkness 
instead of light (v, 18-20). 

Such is the gist of his indictment, given mostly in literal 
and exceedingly trenchant terms. Then in a final- series of 
illustrative figures he puts the summary of it, with its pur- 
pose, in symbolic form. The first of these is a vision of 
Jehovah, standing by a wall with a plumb line (vii, 7-9) — 
a symbol of the standard of righteousness essential to the 
welfare and survival of a nation. It is his interpretation of 
this vision which causes the priest Amaziah to accuse him 
of treason and to send him back to Tekoa (vii, 10-13). 
Then follows, secondly, a vision of a basket of summer 
fruit (viii, 1-3) ; from which he gathers the lesson : " The 
end is come upon my people Israel." The symbolism of 
this is not clear to us who read Amos in translation ; be- 
cause he draws the lesson not so much by essential signifi- 
cance as by wordplay, — as the words for "summer fruit" 
{kaits) and " end " {kets) are in Hebrew almost identical in 
form ; — still, the ripeness and rottenness of summer fruit 
may be connoted. This is followed, thirdly (ix, 9), by 
a strong figure which, though still severe and searching, 
contains a promise that compensates for the warning and 

[■si] 



GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

gives its ultimate purpose. It is the figure of the sifting of 
grain. '' For lo, I will command, and I will sift the house 
of Israel among all the nations, like as grain is sifted in 
a sieve, yet shall not the least kernel fall upon the earth." 
This reveals the large and in the end beneficent ideal that 
forms the background of the general prophetic message. 
By all their threats and warnings, severe as these are, the 
prophets are preparing for Israel a noble destiny. 

11 

Hosea, and his Sense of Outraged Love. Amos came to 
Israel, as Elijah before him had come, from another part 
of the country, pronouncing doom like a stern and unpity- 
ing judge ; and he went his way again as a stranger, having 
apparently gained only scorn and contempt. Soon after his 
mission was over, however, he was succeeded by another 
prophet, Hosea, a man of very different point of view and 
temperament. As one born and bred among the people, 
(familiar with their inherited customs and character, Hosea 
felt with intimate realization their condition as frorn within. 

He attacks the same prevalent evils as did Amos ; pre- 
dicts the same doom of national dissolution and dispersion. 
His indictment, indeed, is even more severe than Amos's. 
But unlike his predecessor he speaks in the spirit not of 
austerity and judgment but of love and entreaty. '' How 
shall I give thee up, Ephraim .? how shall I cast thee off, 
Israel ? " (xi, 8) — such is the undertone of his prophecy. 
The phases of national and social iniquity which come home 
most poignantly to him are such as correspond to this lov- 
ing, yearning nature. As Amos has inveighed against the 
high-handed wrongs and greed which are evident to the 
world, Hosea feels the evil of the more inward vices : 
the prevalent falseness and licentiousness, the spiritual 
ignorance, the social rottenness and consequent decay of all 
that is sound and manly in character. 



THE STRESS OF PROPHECY 

Hosea's prophetic career dates from near the end of the 
reign of Jeroboam II — that is, from about 745 b.c. — and 
HisDisor- extends to about 736 b.c, or some fifteen years 
dered Times before the downfall of Samaria. It began while 
still the nation, as in the time of Amos's prophesying, 
was in its careless and luxurious prosperity. But when, in 
740 B.C., Jeroboam died, the moral rottenness and weak- 
ness of Israel came to the surface in a period of violence 
and anarchy. '' No sooner was he dead," says a modern 
account, ''than all the faults of administration and sources 
of weakness which his pomp had disguised became evident, 
and suddenly the death-throes of Israel began." ^ In the 
course of the succeeding eighteen years Israel had six 
kings, several of whom were assassinated by usurpers ; and 
those who could keep their throne for a little while had to 
buy off the encroaching power of Assyria by paying enor- 
mous tribute. Meanwhile attempts were made to gain the 
alliance and help of Egypt; which only made matters worse, 
and revealed the confused state that the mind of the nation 
was in, wholly unworthy of a people chosen of Jehovah 
(cf . vii, 11). They were not lacking in desperate bravery 
when. the actual siege of their capital came; their lack was 
rather of the wisdom, the poise, the stamina, which a loyal 
and intelligent service of their God would have engendered. 

It was during this turbulent and anarchic time that all 
the latter part of Hosea's prophecy was uttered ; and the 
How his very style of his prophecy, crowded, abrupt, un- 
ReSts^the oi"ganized, reflects the anomalous situation. Both 
Situation his literal utterances and his figures are full of 
this quality. ''My people are destroyed," he says, "for 
lack of knowledge " (iv, 6). " Ephraim is like a silly dove, 
without understanding; they call unto Egypt, they go to 
Assyria" (vii, 11), — falling helplessly into the clutches of 
the arrogant outer kingdoms, as a dove flutters into a trap. 

1 Westphal and Du Pontet, " The Law and the Prophets," p. 286. 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

'' Ephraim, he mixeth among the peoples ; Ephraim is a 
cake not turned" (vii, 8), — a striking image of an in- 
consistent, unformed character, burnt to crisp on one side 
and raw dough on the other. And the cause of it all, to 
the prophet's mind, is that senseless proclivity to idolatry 
which bewilders and debases the idea and service of God. 
''Ephraim is joined to idols," he says; ''let him alone" 
(iv, 17). These and many other utterances, expressed often 
in very telling figures, go to make up the prophet's descrip- 
tion of an enfeebled and degenerate national character, unfit 
to hold its own and maintain a worthy manhood among the 
heathen nations of the earth. 

And yet all this is said with utmost tenderness by 
Hosea, preeminently the prophet of love. " My heart is 
„. - turned within .me, my compassions are kindled 

from Expe- together " (xi, 8), he says in bitterness of grief. 
nence ^^^ does he leave his people without pointing 

out a way upward from their apostasy and degradation, 
though at the cost of exile and dispersion. They were to 
be punished, in a way that would reveal the meaning of 
their sin, but the punishment would be remedial. This 
oracle he gives them through the fundamental figure. under 
which he conceives of their relation to Jehovah — a figure 
drawn from his own domestic experience. 

Hosea had married a wife who soon after marriage proved 
an adulteress. Like Isaiah after him, he gave to the chil- 
dren of this union names in the meaning of which his 
prophetic message was symbolized. To the first, born while 
his wife was still faithful, he gave the name " Jezreel," sig- 
nificant both for past history and future destiny ; for Jezreel 
was the city where bloody deeds had been committed calling 
for vengeance (i, 4) ; but also its meaning, " whom God 
hath sown," was significant of the dispersion that awaited 
the nation. " I will sow her unto me in the earth," he says 
later (ii, 23), not in severity but in promise. 

1 154] 



THE STRESS OF PROPHECY 

To the second and third children, born illegitimately, he 
gave the names Lo-Ruhamah, '' unpitied," and Lo-Ammi, 
*' no kin of mine"; significant alike of their detachment 
from his paternity and of the people's apostasy from Jeho- 
vah. Later the wife left him, becoming a common harlot, 
going lower and lower in infamy until she was sold into 
slavery. His affection for her, however, did not cease. It 
was intensified, rather, by her hapless condition. He bought 
her back, and after a fitting season of seclusion restored her 
to his home and family. 

From this domestic experience Hosea deduced one of the 
most tender prophetic revelations of all time. In his own 
heart, remaining so true and steadfast in spite of outraged 
affection, he read a fortiori the unchanging love of Jehovah 
for his people. If Hosea, a man, could so suffer and for- 
give, much more could God. So this inner experience be- 
came for him thenceforth the speaking symbol of relations 
in Israel. They too, in their infatuation for idolatrous wor- 
ship, had wandered off after the nature gods whom they 
deemed the givers of their fertility and prosperity ; and 
they must be made to know by stern experience of exile 
and seclusion what was the spiritual consequence of idolatry 
and who was the real Source of their blessings. Jehovah 
had loved and cared for them with the tenderness of a 
husband. They had the home, the protection, the comforts 
granted a wife. But they had chosen to debauch their spirit 
with paramours ; and barrenness and slavery must be their 
natural doom (cf. ix, 14). They must be banished from their 
pleasant land to the wilderness ; must be scattered among 
the nations, until again they were fit for the home and 
household of Jehovah. 

From Hosea's time onward this figure of Jehovah's rela- 
tion to his people as a marriage relation, and of their apos- 
tasy as the unfaithfulness of a false wife, became a staple 
image in the prophets. It is applied afterward to Judah 



GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

by Jeremiah and by the Second Isaiah (Jer. iii, i ; Isa. liv, 
4-8 ; Ixii, 4, 5 ; cf. i, 21 ; Mic. i, 7) ; to Jerusalem, and to 
both Jerusalem and Samaria by Ezekiel (Ezek. xvi and xxiii). 

Yet along v/ith the prophecy of doom are hints and hopes 
of better things to succeed. It is Israel's destiny, foretold 
His Presage from old time, to be /'as the sand of the sea 
of Hope for multitude" (i, 10 ; cf. Gen. xxii, 17) ; and if 

scattered, as the name '' Jezreel " indicates, yet the scattering 
may be a sowing and the precursor of harvests. It is this 
destiny which the prophet seems to presage for Israel. At 
the time of their deportation (722 b.c.) this kingdom of 
Israel disappears from history ; and much conjecture has 
been made by scholars — and • near-scholars — as to what 
became of the lost ten tribes. *' I will sow her unto me in 
the earth" (ii, 23) is Jehovah's word to them ; as if Israel, 
brought by dispersion to the better mind, were somehow to 
remain integral in character, and be the seed of a better 
civilization. 

The words in which he sums up the forecast of their 
destiny have a kind of apocalyptic strain, like the oracles 
of Joel and Isaiah. They prophesy a far-off event which 
can be understood not in political or literal but only in 
spiritual terms, — the finality which was dimly before all 
the prophets, but which each one apprehended according to 
the ruling ideas of his age. '' For the children of Israel," 
he says, ** shall abide many days without king and without 
prince, and without sacrifice, and without pillar, and without 
ephod or teraphim : afterward shall the children of Israel 
return, and seek Jehovah their God, and David their king, 
and shall come with fear unto Jehovah and to his goodness 
in the latter days " (iii, 4, 5). The whole final chapter (xiv) 
is in this tone. 



[156] 



THE STRESS OF PROPHECY 

III. In the Southern Kingdom 

As the downfall of the northern kingdom approached, 
the preliminary disturbances were not unfelt by its sister 
state, the kingdom of Judah. That kingdom also, indeed, 
directly or indirectly, was shaken to its center by the As- 
syrian invasions, and in moral stamina was as ill prepared 
to meet them as was its northern neighbor. With the vast 
world movements in progress, wherein the petty tribal states 
were gradually being absorbed in the great empires, a similar 
doom for Judah in her turn could only be a question of 
time. And that the same doubtful policy toward the great 
powers was prevalent there as Rosea had denounced in 
Israel may be seen in such chapters as Isaiah xxviii and 
XXX ; wherein the great prophet of Judah draws a direct 
lesson for his people from the headstrong folly of the 
northern kingdom. 



A Postponement of Doom. But Judah 's time before her 
ordeal of actual exile was postponed for a century and a 
quarter more ; and from the literary and prophetic products 
of the period that intervened we can understand why. It 
was Judah's providential duty, as we have seen, to set the 
moral and cultural standard for the whole family of Israel ; 
and she had been too heedless of her trust, too recreant 
to her responsibility (see Amos ii, 4, 5 ; Hos. xii, 2). 
There was much educational development yet needed, much 
training in the first principles of truth and righteousness, 
before the southern kingdom could be ready to meet her 
doom. For it must be remembered that her distinctive 
destiny lay beyond the break-up of an independent state. 
This was only a preliminary, only a necessary step, toward 
something else. Her real destiny was rather to be enlarge- 
ment, through transplantation, to a momentous mission for 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

humanity. It was for this that unawares to herself she 
was in the large sense undergoing preparation. 

Herein we see the difference in the destinies of the two 
kingdoms. Israel, the northern people, with its more devel- 
oped cosmopolitan sense, was to be '' sown to Jehovah in 
the earth" (Hos. ii, 23), the hidden seed and leaven of a 
more sterling type of character among the nations ; but the 
vague prophecies of its restoration do not imply a restored 
state (cf. Amos v, 14, 15 ; ix, 9-1 1 ; Hos, i, 1 1 ; xi, 9-1 1 ; 
xiv, 4-8). It was rather to work out its destiny as a people 
dispersed yet still faithful to type. Judah, on the other 
hand, though she is to be exiled in the same way, is to re- 
main organically intact, and in course of time to be again 
in her own land a center of enlightenment and sanity of 
conscience to the world (cf. Isa. ii, 2-4 ; Mic. iv, 1-3 ; 
Isa. xlix,_ 5-7 ; Ix). In other words, in the general leveling 
movement of empire, wherein as in a huge melting pot the 
provincial tribes and their grotesque little gods disappear, it 
is this small nation alone whose God and whose law of life 
are destined to survive and be permanent. The subjugation 
and exile of this people are not to be their destruction but 
their opportunity ; and hence their preparation for so mo- 
mentous a destiny must be sound and vital to correspond. 

Accordingly, from the overthrow of the northern king- 
dom on, the field of prophetic activity is transferred to the 
remaining state of Judah. It is not to be sup- 

The Trans- . , . , , , / 

fer, and the posed that either prophets or people can see the 
Averted g^d or the deep meaning of so great a destiny 
at once. The prophets can only see and take the 
next step — steering the nation's character and ideals in 
a way that will eventually come out so. To this end they 
must act both as statesmen and as religious and moral 
teachers, the two functions being in their view inseparable. 
When the northern kingdom fell, the kingdom of Judah, 
to which hitherto it had been a kind of buffer state, lay 

[158] 



THE STRESS OF PROPHECY 

open in its turn to Assyrian encroachment and invasion. 
The evil had indeed already begun, when King Ahaz of 
Judah so weakly invited the aid of Assyria against a coali- 
tion of Syria and Israel in which they, having first in vain 
sought his cooperation, plotted to dethrone him (2 Kings 
xvi, 5-9 ; Isa. vii). Instead of joining with them against 
Assyria he invited the foe himself as ally against them, 
thus putting himself under foreign tribute and power. With 
this short-sighted state policy was conjoined an infatuation 
on his part for the more aesthetic Ass3Tian religion, and of 
course disloyalty to the worship of. Jehovah. He showed this 
by introducing foreign idolatries wholesale into Judah, and 
giving them precedence over his native worship (2 Kings 
xvi). This was in 732 b.c, ten years before Samaria fell. 

This cowardly and faithless policy on the part of King 
Ahaz, favoring as it did just the* kind of encroachment that 
Assyria desired, was the beginning of a long period of trou- 
ble and suspense for the Judean state. Through the reign of 
Ahaz's successor, Hezekiah, the tension continued, in vary- 
ing phases of imminence or remoteness, until it culminated 
in the invasion, in 701 B.C., by Sennacherib ; who laid w-aste 
many Judean towns, carried away more than two hundred 
thousand inhabitants,^ and all but captured the capital city 
Jerusalem. On account of the sudden retreat of the Assyrian 
forces, however, an event which to Judah had all the effect 
of a miracle, the city remained inviolate, as Isaiah had 
stoutly prophesied it would (Isa. xxxvii, 33-35). Thus the 
crisis was averted, but only after it had become so imminent 
and acute as to work a profound and lasting moral effect 
on the whole nation. 

It was while this crisis was threatening, during about one 
third of the eighth century B.C. that two prophets, nearly 
contemporaneous with each other, dealt with the situation. 

1 According to the memorial inscription by Sennacherib himself, the 
so-called Taylor cylinder, now in the British Museum. 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

These were : Micah, a country prophet, who Uved in the 
village of Moresheth-Gath, near the frontier between Judah 
The Twin ^^^ ^^^ Philistine country ; and Isaiah, the son of 
Prophets in Amoz, beginning earlier and prophesying longer, 
•'" ^ who, living in Jerusalem and being himself of 

distinguished family, had the ear of the leading and wealthy 
classes. Twin prophets these two may not unfitly be called. 
Though speaking from the midst of different classes and 
environments, both sense with like intensity the signs of 
the times ; both feel essentially the same national evils and 
needs ; and both mold their messages to the same apocalyptic 
vision, described indeed in identical terms : the vision of a 
golden age succeeding in the latter days to the present bad 
one, and bringing in the final era of law and righteousness 
and peace (Isa. ii, 2-4 = Mic. iv, 1-3).. 

II 

Micah, Prophet of the Countryside. Of the two contem- 
porary prophets Micah is the more primitive and austere, 
as might be expected of a country seer whose felt duty is 
to be the spokesman and champion of the common man. 
In general we may say that he sets forth in outline and 
rugged epitome what Isaiah, from his relatively cultured 
center, gives in more finished and rhetorical detail. 

His prophecy, purporting to have been given ''in the 
days of Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah," 
and dating from a time apparently a little before the fall 
of the northern kingdom, is addressed alike to both king- 
doms as if they were an undivided people, — as indeed the 
prophets always regard them. It is '' the word . . . which 
he saw concerning Samaria and Jerusalem" (Mic. i, i) ; 
the two capitals named as representing the two realfns. In 
both kingdoms it is still a time of luxury and worldly pros- 
perity, with their attendant evils equally flagrant in both. 
Micah's home, in the frontier region between Judah and the 

[160] 



THE STRESS OF PROPHECY 

Philistine country, just among the mortgaged farms where the 
land-grabbing greed of the times causes most distress, and 
near the great artery of trade and war where the Assyrian 
invasions of a few years later cause the most devastation, 
is favorably situated to observe spiritual and material con- 
ditions as they are. Of the coming invasions, however, he 
says little, beyond the general prediction that both Samaria 
(i, 6, 7) and Jerusalem (iii, 12, a prophecy recalled a full 
century later, Jer. xxvi, 18) are doomed. His regards are 
deeper ; though he feels with realistic keenness the disasters 
that will come to the villages of his vicinity (i, 8-16). His 
preliminary object, for the realization of which he feels a 
special endowment, is ''to declare unto Jacob his trans- 
gression, and to Israel his sin " (iii, 8 ; cf. i, 5). 

We have called Micah and Isaiah twin prophets. It seems 
to have been their mission, whether in actual collaboration 
or not, to work shoulder to shoulder for the spiritual wel- 
fare of their people. As Isaiah was the mentor of the lead- 
ing classes in Jerusalem, Micah was the spokesman and 
champion of the plain people of the countryside. He shared 
their condition, their poverty, their wrongs. He knew and 
honored their native worth. He gave noble definition to 
their common-sense religion. And from all this Jie drew a 
prophetic outlook toward broader horizons and a worthier 
goal of life. In a true sense, indeed, we may call his 
prophecy an outline map of the prophetic movement from 
the point of view of the common man, the man unde- 
flected by the crookedness of the world. 

Let us note the main steps in this prophecy of his. 

After his introductory warning and lament (chap, i), he 
begins his prophecy proper with a sharp indictment of the 
men who in both kingdoms seem to have gained control 
of the nation's affairs, the landed proprietors who plot and 
practice iniquity '' because it is in the power of their hand " 
(ii, 1,2). It was with them and their cruel mercenary spirit 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

that the most sweeping evil of the times lay (see ii, i , 2 ; 
iii, 1-3 ; and of. Isa. v, 8 ; Job xxiv, 2-8) ; a ruling spirit 
The Call to a ^^^^S the rich which was reducing the poor 
Contrasted landsmen to destitution, and extorting cries of 
es iny distress (ii, 4, 8, 9). The money greed seemed 
to be the motive everywhere ; judges, priests, and prophets 
alike were under the blight of it (iii, 5, 11). It is not as 
mere invective, however, that the prophet brings this indict- 
ment. It is in order to portray the ruin it works in the 
nation's character. The prophetic vision is darkened and 
falsified (iii, 6, 7 ; cf. ii, 11) ; the religious sense is dimmed 
(iii, 11). From this hard and stupid state of things it is the 
prophet's endeavor to rouse them to a higher and contrasted 
ideal ; it is not in Jehovah's purpose that the people of his 
hand should subside to the heartless level of greed and 
luxury. Their mission is other. ''Arise ye, and depart," he 
says, ' ' for this is not your resting-place ; because of unclean- 
ness that destroy eth, even with a grievous destruction" 
(ii, 10). Accordingly, as soon as he has put into a concrete 
prediction the destruction that will prove him true (iii, 12), 
he sets over against it the vision of a coming age of light 
and leading which his prophecy shares with Isaiah's (iv, 1-5 ; 
cf. Isa. ii, 2-4). The ruined temple is to be replaced by a 
world-temple, to which all nations will rejoice to come for 
the word of Jehovah. It is in having the missionary spirit, 
not the predatory, in being a center of light and kindly 
law, not of selfishness, that Jerusalem is to find her true 
rest and peace. 

In this call to a contrasted destiny Micah strikes the 
spiritual keynote of the whole prophetic movement ; it is 
toward that beneficent object that, as we have noted, Israel's 
strange vicissitudes of history work together.^ But we have 
also to note, as St. Paul afterwards did and as Micah evi- 
dently feels, that ''they are not all Israel that are of Israel," 

1 See above, pp. 136 ff. 

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THE STRESS OF. PROPHECY 

(see Rom. ix, 6 ; cf. Matt, iii, 9). We cannot predicate this 
good tendency of all, or even of a majority, of the Jewish 
nation ; to find it we must penetrate to the inner and nobler 
soul of the people, recognizing thereby a differentiation of 
moral and religious elements. It is just in this period cov- 
ered by the prophetic activity of Micah and Isaiah, and 
perhaps first by Micah himself, that such differentiation is 
made ; indicated by the symbolic personification used to 
designate the true Israel, '' the daughter of Zion " (Mic. i, 
13 ; iv, 8, 10, 13), — Zion being the local name that con- 
noted Jehovah's special abode and place of revelation (cf. 
Joel iii, 16 ; Amos i, 2). In close connection with this term 
the prophet employs the idea of ''the remnant," an idea 
of which Isaiah will make much use. It is to '' the hill of 
the daughter of Zion " that the dominion will come, when 
Jehovah has ''assembled" the remnant of Israel, whom 
Micah characteristically identifies with the poor people now 
so wronged and oppressed (ii, 12, 13; iv, 6-8). Then in 
an impassioned apostrophe he calls on the daughter of Zion, 
whom he represents as longing for a king and counselor, to 
"be in pain, and labor to bring forth . . . .like a woman in 
travail " (iv, 9, 10) ; and predicts that she will be brought 
in exile to Babylon, where the assembled nations who have 
come to mock her will be themselves like sheaves on the 
threshing-floor, while, she is the agency commissioned to 
thresh (iv, 9-v, i), — a prophecy which seems to be recalled 
and applied at the time to which it refers (cf. Isa. xli, 15, 
16). All this, whether written by Micah or added by a later 
editor, 1 is a remarkable epitome of Israel's contrasted destiny, 
introducing a number of symbolic terms which thenceforth 
play a prominent part in the prophetic vocabulary. 

1 As many critics maintain, on the apparent ground that every prophecy 
must needs be deemed as nearly a vaticinium post eventii as possible. The 
name "Babylon," vs. lo, scares them. With this, however, we are not 
especially concerned ; we take the text as it is. 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

The apostrophe to the daughter of Zion, in which the 
prophet describes her longing for a king and the destiny 
The Little which succeeds to her travail-pangs, is followed 
Town of by an apostrophe to the little town of Bethlehem, 
et e em predicting that out of that seemingly insignificant 
place is to come forth one ''that is to be ruler in Israel, 
whose goings forth are from of old, from everlasting" (v, 2). 
This is the earliest prophecy in which the hope of Israel is 
centered definitely in a person ; and whatever it meant to 
the prophet's own mind, it was thenceforth taken as the 
prediction of a coming Messiah, and as fixing for future 
reference his birthplace (see Matt, ii, 4, 5). • Micah's con- 
ception of his greatness is couched in terms of the shepherd 
and his flock (v, 4 ; cf . ii, 1 2), as befits the thought-range 
of a country prophet ; he is proudly sensible also of the 
supreme honor done to an obscure place and a humble class 
of people such as he represents ; but of one eternal truth 
the ages may be sure : '' This man shall be our peace " 
(v, 5), — one of the most far-reaching prophecies of the 
Old Testament. 

For the rest,, for what concerns the political events of 
the immediate future, the prophet's vision is vague and 
unformed ; evidently it -is not a material but a spiritual 
future that he has in mind, and this is not measurable in 
terms of time and season. He is well aware of the immi- 
nent Assyrian peril (v, 5,6); but the only power he im- 
agines to set against it is a power of leadership, '' seven 
shepherds and eight principal men," and it is the one 
shepherd who, after all, will deliver the land (v, 6). From 
this more immediate prospect, however, he makes escape to 
the larger destiny of ''the remnant of Jacob," who shall be 
among the nations both like the gentle influence of dew 
and rain (v, 7) and like the ravaging of the young lion 
(v, 8) ; and in whose day of power the cumbrous military 
lumber and the elaborate usages of idolatry will be cut off 

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THE STRESS OF PROPHECY 

(v, 10-15). All this betokens in the prophet a large spirit- 
ual presage, an intuition of coming inner values, which tran- 
scends his power to describe. 

The thought of the elaborate usages of idolatry which 
''in that day" are doomed to pass suggests by contrast 
God»sPiea ^^^ plainness and reasonableness of the religion 
for Plain that Jehovah requires from his people. This is 
®^^^°" not put as a requirement, however, but as a 
plea ; it is " Jehovah's controversy with his people " (vi, 2), 
appealing to their simple sense of the way in which he has 
led them. The case of Balak and Balaam (Num. xxii-xxiv) 
is cited, apparently because of the lavish offerings made and 
wealth poured out in a heathen effort to buy a favorable 
response from Jehovah. In Micah's view, as in his con- 
temporary Isaiah's (cf. Isa. i, 10-17), no such labored serv- 
ice is needed or fitting, though it reach the extreme of 
sacrifice (vi, 7). Then follows the celebrated utterance which 
is universally deemed the sanest and most reasonable defi- 
nition of religion that the Old Testament or indeed any 
hterature aft'ords : ''He hath showed thee, O man, what is 
good; and what doth Jehovah require of thee, but to do 
justly, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with thy 
God ? " (vi, 8). It is the country prophet's remedy for a 
time that, with its tendencies to the spirit of greed, had 
grown top-heavy with its luxurious cultus (cf. Amos iv, 4, 
5 ; Isa. i, 11). 

This plea for plain religion is not made in invective as 
is Isaiah's. In a spirit of tolerance, rather, it recognizes in 
the people a sincere craving for the favor of God and a 
disposition to make the greatest sacrifices therefor. But 
these are the religiously inclined ; and not all are so, per- 
haps indeed only a remnant. The plea has also a voice, 
however, for "the city," for the classes engaged in trade 
and traffic and husbandry, the classes whose mercenary 
spirit is getting the upper hand. If they will let their sound 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

intuition ^ speak, they too will see that a conduct that observes 
justice and mercy and humility has its vital claim upon 
them, a claim which their dishonest tricks of trade, derived 
from their more worldly brethren of the northern kingdom, 
have outraged. No peace of life, no real prosperity, no 
esteem and honor among the nations, can come of such 
practices ; they are utterly inconsistent with God's require- 
ment. Such seems to be the purport and connection of the 
passage (vi, 9-16). It is addressed to those whose favor- 
ite literature is not prophecy nor poetry but Wisdom. ^ 

As Micah contemplates the spirit of his time, the sense 
of his loneliness therein, and of the falseness and rotten- 
Emer in ^^^^ of the social Structure, comes upon him with 
from the overwhelming force ; it is as if he were living 
ora aos -^^ ^ moral chaos, wherein all kindly human rela- 
tions were reversed and a man's enemies were the men of 
his own house. It is the pessimistic stage in his book of 
prophecy, from which his faith must make escape if he 
would keep sight of Jehovah's purpose at all (vii, 1-6). 

Accordingly, in the last chapter of his book (vii, 7-20) the 
spirit of the prophet, by a magnificent resilience, emerges 
from the doubts and perplexities into which the evils of the 
time have temporarily plunged him. '' Rejoice not against 
me, O mine enemy," he exclaims; ''when I fall, I shall 
arise ; when I sit in darkness, Jehovah will be a light unto 
me " (vii, 8). We have noted his personified symbol the 
''daughter of Zion," whose mission it was to bring forth 
the kingly spirit of redemption and to " arise and thresh " 
(iv, 10, 13) ; we have to note here another personification, 
his enemy, " her who said unto me. Where is Jehovah thy 
God.?" (vii, 10), a mocking spirit which he has encountered, 
which is destined to shame and extinction. It is "a day for 
building thy walls," the constructive day succeeding to this 

1 So I interpret the word translated " wisdom," vi, 9. 

2 See above, pp. 92-96. 

[166] 



THE STRESS OF PROPHECY 

disintegration. He depicts it in much the same terms as does 
Isaiah : the large and liberal time when peoples shall come 
to Israel from the great realms of the earth (vii, 12 ; cf. 
Isa. xix, 23, 24), and in Jehovah's light submit themselves 
to his fear (vii, 17 ; cf. Isa. xi, 12 ; xlix, 18 ; Ix). Thus by 
his faith in that contrasted destiny to which in the begin- 
ning he has called his people, Micah pushes his prophecy to 
the outer limit of the prophetic range, and proves himself 
a worthy sharer with Isaiah in discovering and interpreting 
the inner signs of his day. In the sound spiritual insight 
of the twin prophets of Judah prophecy is responding nobly 
to its time of stress. 

Ill 

Isaiah of Jerusalem. Coming now to the sublimest of the 
prophets and one of the most vital literary forces of all time, 
we have from the outset to reckon, in the Book of Isaiah, 
with a divided authorship. Of the sixty-six chapters making 
up the book, the last twenty-seven (chapters xl-lxvi) belong 
to a period about one hundred and sixty years later than the 
period with which chapters i to xxxix deal, and is accordingly 
distinguished in modern scholarship as the Second Isaiah or 
D enter o- Isaiah. This fact of divided authorship, which may 
be taken as an assured result of criticism, is determined by 
internal evidence, and naturally gives rise to much study of 
the relation of the two parts of the book to each other, — 
if indeed there is a connection more than accidental. 

In the view which we shall here follow, and which is 
derived from the like internal evidence, the authorship may 
better be called composite than divided. In other words, the 
Second Isaiah, in our view, is an organic sequel and sup- 
plement to the First ; as if a later prophet, musing in the 
same vein, had taken up the theme where the earlier one had 
laid- it down, and rounded it out to a finish. And so the 
two parts, while set in a different scene and subtending two 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

widely sundered epochs of time, are in reality one book, 
with one homogeneous scheme of thought, and with a clear 
coordination and consecution of elements. To the just 
articulation of this organic scheme the work of Isaiah of 
Jerusalem is as essential, and as lucidly contributive, as is 
that of his supplementer, the seer of the Exile. 

What makes the Book of Isaiah as a whole so sublime 
is the fact that by its coordinated parts it covers the whole 
The Vision range of the prophetic period. Beginning some 
and the Word years before the fall of the northern kingdom, 
weathering a vital crisis in Judah, and culminating as the 
Chaldean exile is felt to be near its end, it groups its main 
subject matter round two historical focal points : the Assyrian 
invasions, culminating with that of Sennacherib in 701 b.c. ; 
and the campaigns of Cyrus, bringing near the fall of Baby- 
lon in 538 B.C. and the prospective release of the Jewish 
people from exile. Between these points there lies, with its 
generous horizons of educative time and experience, well- 
nigh the whole landscape of literary prophecy. To traverse 
this in spiritual realization requires more than a sage's or 
statesman's genius : it calls for a divinely touched sense 
of the mind and purpose of God. Such a sense this Book 
of Isaiah evinces beyond any other Scripture book. It is a 
blend of apocalyptic and historically conditioned prevision. 
Both these qualities seem recognized in the titles appended 
to the body of the prophecy. In chapter i, i, it is called a 
Vision : '' the vision of Isaiah the son of Amoz," — a desig- 
nation which we find in only two other prophetic books, 
Obadiah and Nahum. What this term distinctively means, 
in Isaiah's case, will come up for consideration later.^ The 
opening chapter, giving the ground and design underlying 
this Vision, is a fitting introduction to the whole book, though 
it may have contemplated only the time of Isaiah of Jerusalem. 
It lays a foundation on which ages of prophecy can build. 

1 Under the heading, " Isaiah's Vision of Destiny," pp. 189 ff. 

[168] 



THE STRESS OF PROPHECY 

After this initial chapter, however, a new start is made, 
under a title which names the prophecy a Word : '' the word 
that Isaiah the son of Amoz saw" (ii, i). It seems thus to 
draw in the matter of the book from the apocalyptic to the 
local and historic ; like the vision title but in a more 
restricted sense it purports to be "' concerning Judah and 
Jerusalem." This title, unlike Micah's, seems to ignore the 
northern kingdom (his was '' concerning Samaria and Jeru- 
salem," Mic. i, i) ; but in the prophecy itself some of the 
most notable oracles are connected with the fortunes and 
character of that people (see Isa. ix, 8-x, 4 ; xvii, i-ii ; 
xxviii, 1-6). Mainly, however, the prophet is called 'to be 
the spokesman of Jehovah for the capital and its grave 
needs in this time of stress. 

It is with this Isaiah of Jerusalem, Isaiah the son of Amoz, 
and his '' word," that the present section is concerned. 

What Micah sees from the country and from the point 
of view of the common man, the man on the under side, 
The Situation Isaiah sees from his station among the aristo- 
in Jerusalem cratic classes in Jerusalem : a people materialized 
by luxury and heartless greed (v, 8-12 ; 18-23), eager for 
foreign customs and fads (ii, 6-9), mixing their formal wor- 
ship with iniquity (i, 10-14), and obtuse to spiritual things 
(vi, 9, 10). In dealing wdth this situation he sets over 
against it, as does Micah, the contrasted destiny of the latter 
days (ii, 2-4) ; but he applies its lessons in inverse order. 
Micah works up to it from the deplorable conditions of the 
day (Mic. i— iii) ; Isaiah, taking it as a literary point of de- 
parture, works downward and outward from it to the details 
of the utter contrast that he feels around him, the thankless 
conditions with which his prophetic labors must deal (ii-v). 
Employing for this mostly the impassioned rhythm of pub- 
lic discourse, he sums up the situation with a song (v, 1-7); 
in which he depicts a well-located vineyard, which was pro- 
vided with every care and cultivation for producing choice 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

grapes, and yet brought forth only wild grapes, — as if all 
the endeavor to improve upon untamed nature were in vain. 
''For the vineyard of Jehovah of hosts," his song concludes, 
'' is the house of Israel, and the men of Judah his pleasant 
plant : and he looked for justice, but behold, oppression ; 
for righteousness, but behold, a cry " (v, 7). 

For such a condition of things he can only prophesy 
disaster and gloom (v, 30) ; and he is not sparing in the 
tremendous power of his invective ; but as an alleviating 
offset he always keeps in mind the alternative nobler con- 
duct and destiny reserved for the sterling remnant which 
is to constitute the redeeming element of the true Israel 
(i, 18-20; vi, 12, .13 ; iv, 2-6). 

By its first title the prophecy of Isaiah is assigned to 
'' the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings 
Isaiah's Call of Judah " (i, I ) ; but it was not until the year of 
and its Object King Uzziah's death (see vi, i), which occurred in 
740 B.C., that he had the particular vision from which he 
received his call to the prophetic office. The call, with its 
awesome experience of a mystic contact with Jehovah and 
his ministering spirits, imparted a new sense to the prophet 
and to prophecy — the sense of Jehovah's holiness. His dis- 
tinctive designation of Jehovah, as the personal Being whose 
spokesman he is called to be, is ''the Holy One of Israel." 
The primary meaning of holiness is separateness : from 
all moral evil, with its corrupting and entangling influences, 
from all that is prone or indifferent to such evil ; a separate- 
ness of which Jehovah is the eternal and living Pattern. 
To make this idea lucid, to make it prevail in a perverse 
and corrupted nation, and to enforce men's relation thereto, 
is the long and laborious task of Isaiah, — a task which can 
hardly count its first success for forty years, and then only 
by what seems a miraculous event. 

To put the matter in more modern terms, we may say 
the object of Isaiah's prophetic task was to induce in his 

[170] 



THE STRESS OF PROPHECY 

people a spiritual realization of God and truth and duty. 
This, a hard undertaking in any case, was supremely hard 
in a people whose worship was ritual and formal and whose 
ideals were materialized to worldly pursuits and standards. 
They had developed no sense for spiritual values ; and such 
sense could be induced only with difficulty. It is with a 
realization of this difficulty that the Lord sends him : '' Go, 
and tell this people, 'Hear ye indeed, but understand not; 
and see ye indeed, but perceive not.' Make the, heart of this 
people fat, and make their ears heavy, and shut their eyes ; 
lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and 
understand with their heart, and turn again, and be healed " 
(vi, 9, lo). The same obtuseness to spiritual truth was later 
recognized by Jesus (see Matt, xiii, 14, 15), and by St. Paul 
(see Acts xxviii, 25-27 ; Rom. xi, 8) ; it was, as in Isaiah's 
case, simply their encounter with the fact that spiritual 
things must be spiritually discerned (cf. i Cor, ii, 14, 15). 
We have noted that Micah attributes a like blindness to the 
prophets of the time (Mic. iii, 5-8) ; Hosea saw the same 
in the northern kingdom (Hos. ix, 7, 8) ; Isaiah too has 
much discouragement over the slowness and stupidity of 
the people in getting their spiritual sense awake (Isa. xxix, 
9-12). But to keep at it, ''line upon line," to induce true 
spiritual insight among a blind people who think they see, 
is for a whole generation the prophet's thankless labor. 

In bringing about this quickened spiritual attitude Isaiah 
must work with the social and political conditions of the 
time ; and to this end must address himself to the concrete 
crises and issues that come before the kingdom of Judah. 
Accordingly, from the beginning of his work he has to con- 
cern himself much with the administrative and diplomatic 
affairs of the state ; his family position seems to give him 
the right. He is in fact the wisest statesman of his time — 
an almost solitary figure committed through a long and 
troublous period to a deep-founded, consistent, far-seeing 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

policy. Encompassed by the arrogant yet temporizing oppor- 
tunism of kings, nobles, and seers, wherein ''all vision is 
become ... as the words of a book that is sealed " (xxix, 
ii), and all religion ''a commandment of men learned by 
rote" (xxix, 13, margin), he alone has the insight to see 
straight and clear and through. He concentrates his pro- 
phetic statesmanship, however, on one main object. His 
fundamental effort is to set up in the torpid soul of the 
nation a current of active spiritual energy responsive to 
Jehovah, ''the Holy One of Israel." Another name for 
this energy is faith ; and, indeed, Isaiah is distinctively the 
prophet of faith, the first of the prophets to lay vigorous 
emphasis on this virtue. It is the vital element with which 
the life of the spirit begins .; it is the element by which 
Israel shall be delivered from national perils and redeemed 
to a noble mission in the earth. 

Our limits of space forbid a detailed account of Isaiah's 
wonderful campaign on behalf of faith, and his far-sighted 
effort thereby to bring eventually to pass his vision of a 
clean Jerusalem, purified, as he expresses it, " by the spirit 
of justice, and by the spirit of burning" (iv, 4). In this 
campaign he has first to deal with the faithless and shallow 
king Ahaz (vii) ; who, dismayed by the coalition of Syria 
and Ephraim against his realm, and already hankering after 
the aesthetic shows of heathen cultus (cf. 2 Kings xvi, 
10-13), had evidently no sincere loyalty to Jehovah and 
was planning to invite aid from Assyria. To him and his 
house the prophet's severe word of warning is, " If ye will 
not believe, surely ye shall not be established" (vii, 9). 
Then later, when the Assyrian peril is imminent, and the 
leaders are nervously planning alliances with Egypt and 
Ethiopia, the prophet's plea for faith in Jehovah is still 
more emphatic. " Behold," his word from Jehovah is, "I 
lay in Zion for a foundation a stone, a tried stone, a pre- 
cious corner-stone of sure foundation : he that believeth 

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THE STRESS OF PROPHECY 

shall not be in haste "• (xxviii, i6). Such faith, working by 
"justice the line, and righteousness the plummet," is to be 
the nation's wisdom and strength ; fortified by its quiet confi- 
dence they need no alien help ; or as he phrases it : " In re- 
turning and rest shall ye be saved : in quietness and in con- 
fidence shall be your strength" (xxx, 15). Through many 
shifts of sentiment and policy, and in spite of scorn and 
contempt (cf. xxviii, 9-13), he counseled this self-respecting 
self-reliant loyalty to Jehovah ; it is the keynote of his pro- 
phetic message. And when at length the long-threatened 
crisis came, and King Hezekiah, who though sincerely dis- 
posed to Isaiah's faith lacked a resolute personality, was 
confronted with Sennacherib's arrogant demand for sur- 
render, the prophet, coming forward, hurled defiance at the 
imperial invader in an answer which tested and exalted his 
faith in the eyes of the world (xxxvii, 21-32 ; cf. 2 Chron. 
xxxii, 23). The sequel was the miraculous intervention 
on the part of Jehovah himself by which he vindicated 
the prophet's word. Jerusalem was prophesied inviolate, and 
proved so. Jehovah's care for his people was revealed, in 
spite of their lack of trust. It was a momentous step in 
the planting of spiritual religion in Israel; a starting point 
for the growth, through the succeeding century (701-597), 
of a character which, when the actual captivity came, would 
find a people strong and ready. 

We have called Isaiah's prophecy a blend of the histori- 
cal and the apocalyptic;^ which is another way of saying 
His Symbolic he had in mind two fields of vision, or rather 
Undertone ^^^q ranges in one field, like concentric circles : 
an immediate and a far-reaching, or, in other words, a 
range of objective circumstances and events and a range of 
inner tendencies and forces. The horizon of the immediate 
range, which was in the more specific purview of Isaiah 
of Jerusalem, was the Assyrian menace and invasion. The 

^ See above, p. 168 ; and for apocalyptic, see p. 147, note 2. 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

far-reaching range, for which the smaller was a kind of gesta- 
tion period, had no horizon except the limitless purpose of 
God for all lands and times ; it contained the initial promise 
of the vision which we see perpetuated in the Second Isaiah. 
To warn and prepare the nation for the Assyrian crisis 
no language of symbolism is needed ; the literal situation, 
with its civic, political, and religious phases, calls merely 
for the plainest and most trenchant speech. Accordingly, 
the prophet employs merely the impassioned terms of ex- 
hortation and admonition, intense to fit the urgency of the 
case, and with such imagery as will give vigor and thrust. 
It is in the masterly use of such literary power, mounting 
at times to wonderful reaches of sublimity, that Isaiah ranks 
among the consummate authors of the world. He did indeed 
employ a kind of dramatic means to enforce his message ; 
but these acts were rather an acted oracle than a symbol. 
Long before the peril was imminent in Judah, perhaps as 
early as the time of Joel and Amos (cf. Joel ii, 32 ; Amos 
V, 15), he had named a son Shear-jashub, ''a remnant shall 
return," — a son old enough to accompany the prophet when 
King Ahaz was meditating submission to Assyria (vii, 3) ; 
and this name embodies the central word of Isaiah's mes- 
sage. Soon after that interview too, when as it would seem 
the troubles of the realm were deemed happily adjusted, 
the prophet named another son Maherrshalal-hash-baz, '' spoil 
speedeth, prey hasteth," — a name meant to proclaim the 
imminence of the woe which would overtake the northern 
kingdom (viii, 1-4). For the rest, however, his thankless 
task, through a generation of contingency and suspense, 
was to bring a fat-hearted, unspiritual people to their senses 
as wards of the Holy One of Israel. As expressed in the 
terms of his call, he had to keep at this arduous duty until 
the land was reduced well-nigh to extremities, and there was 
left only a remnant whom he calls " the holy seed ... the 
stock thereof," frorn which, as from the stump of an oak, 

[174] 



THE STRESS OF PROPHECY 

''whose stock remaineth," the hope of the future was to 
come (vi, 11-13). But when we understand whom he means 
by the remnant, this designation is not figurative but hteral. 

Note. The Cala7nity of the Land. The literal distress referred to 
in vi, II, 12, depicted again in the introductory chapter as the nadir 
point from which the upward movement of the whole prophecy is to 
be reckoned (i, 7-9), was doubtless the Assyrian invasion by Sennach- 
erib in 701 B.C., in the course of which, according to his inscription, 
many towns in the frontiers of Judah (Micah's district; cf. Mic. i, 8-16) 
were devastated, more than 200,000 captives were deported, and Jeru- 
salem was beleaguered. How Isaiah met this calamity, with what 
conviction and faith, we have seen. 

Throughout this moral and civic strain of prophecy, 
however, beginning at his first encounter with the recreant 
house of David (cf. vii, 13), there runs an undertone of 
what may be called symbolic presage ; though whether more 
fitly termed symbolic or spiritually intrinsic is a fair ques- 
tion. In the use of this symbolic undertone Isaiah and his 
contemporary Micah are quite at one,^ Isaiah's being the 
more articulate and finished. Both shape their ideas to a 
coming golden age ; both have at heart the worth and mis- 
sion of the remnant ; both are zealous for the daughter of 
Zion ; both are deeply conscious of a gestation period in 
Israel '' until the time that she who travaileth hath brought 
forth " (Mic. v, 3) ; and out of the visions of both there 
emerges a Personage to whom is ascribed, in terms suited 
to each prophet's circumstances, a leadership kingly and 
pastoral, a Prince of peace to high and lowly. It is in the 
masterly handling and coordination of these symbolic ele- 
ments, if such they may be called, that we get at once the 
direction of Israel's noblest destiny and the substantial be- 
ginnings of Messianic prophecy. No other prophet (except 
his supplementer the Second Isaiah) has contributed such 
essential meanings to Jehovah's revealed will and purpose. 

1 See above, p. i6i. 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

Compared with the values involved in this symbolic under- 
tone, the Assyrian menace was but an incident, a passing 
episode, to be faced and surmounted on the way to a 
nobler destiny. 

A somewhat detailed account of the Messianic strain in 
which this shapes itself is in order here ; because it is the 
element by which the Book of Isaiah ^ is best known and 
which has taken the most vital hold on all the ages 
succeeding him. 

I have called it a symbolic undertone because it deals 
with the evolution of a race's ordained destiny in terms of 
the birth and maturing of a person, or as we may say more 
abstractly, of a divinely quickened personality. It is, so to 
say, the hidden history of the '' holy seed " of Israel, which 
when the spiritual core of the nation is reduced to a seem- 
ingly insignificant remnant is "the stock thereof" (vi, 13) ; 
a history given in glimpses as salient as the needs of the 
dim and perilous times require. The prophet's cryptic an- 
nouncement began when he gave to King Ahaz the sign for 
which the latter had neither sense nor desire : the sign of 
"God with us" (Immanuel ; see vii, 14), a sign to be ap- 
prehended not by such as he but by a spiritual intuition. 
Touched with a mystic penetration, the prophet was aware 
of a thrill, a stirring of new life in Israel which he associ- 
ated with the true daughter of Zion, and interpreted as the 
token of a new spiritual birth ; or as he expressed it, "Be- 
hold, the ^alma'^ (maiden) shall conceive, and bear a son, 
and shall call his name Immanuel." This word, which for 
the prophet names not a symbol but a real fact, is used 

1 One strong element of the essential unity of the Book of Isaiah is the 
fact that this element is carried on continuously and progressively in both 
First and Second Isaiah ; see Chapter VI, i, 3. 

2 This is not the usual name for virgin ; it means a marriageable maiden; 
and the definite article with it seems to refer to someone already known 
or identifiable. Like our Lord's parables, however, it is meant for those 
who have " ears to hear." 

[■76] 



THE STRESS OF PROPHECY 

thereafter to enforce the prediction that when the flood of 
Assyrian invasion shall sweep through the land and men 
shall be inclined to dubious coalitions against it, there will 
be enough of divine power in this new birth, enough of 
spiritual firmness, to withstand the impact (see the repeti- 
tion of the name, viii, 8, lo). With this mystic announce- 
ment, however, he joins a literal one, predicting with formal 
solemnity the birth of his second son, Maher-shalal-hash- 
baz (viii, 1-4) ; of whom, together with his other son Shear- 
jashub, he afhrms for those whose sense is duller, " Behold, 
I and the children whom Jehovah hath given me are for 
signs and for wonders in Israel from Jehovah of hosts, 
who dwelleth in Mount Zion " (viii, 18). 

This sign is for the ** house of David" (cf. vii, 2, 13) 
and the people of Judah ; but with their faithlessness to 
Jehovah's law and their craze for necromancy and divina- 
tion (cf. ii, 6) they are only in the way of distress and 
darkness (viii, 19-22). It is not from their quarter that the 
first light shall come, but from the northern lands that were 
first invaded (cf. 2 Kings xv, 29), " Galilee [circuit or dis- 
trict] of the nations " (ix, 1-5). There, as he prophesies, 
a Child is already born, who shall receive divine names, 
and "of the increase of [whose] government and of peace 
there shall be no end, upon the throne of David and upon 
his kingdom, to establish it, and to uphold it with justice 
and with righteousness from henceforth even for ever " 
(ix, 6, 7). As of the growth and fruitage of the remnant, 
so of this, event the prophet says, "The zeal of Jehovah 
of hosts will perform this " (cf. xxxvii, 32). 

The next announcement is not of a new-born child, but 
of One who has reached the estate of young manhood ; 
and it comes after the prophet has assured his nation that 
the Assyrian is only an agency in Jehovah's hand for the 
punishment of Israel, a scourge whose arrogant function 
will pass, though not until it has swept through Israel 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

almost to Zion (x, 5-19, 28-32), and only a remnant shall 
be left who ''shall no more again lean upon him that smote 
them," — as did Ahaz when he invited their aid (vs. 20). 
A severe destruction and humiliation must precede the 
coming of this Personage (x, 20-23, 33> 34)- ^nd then 
his origin is traced not to David but to David's father 
Jesse and his stock ; which, like Micah's prophecy, identi- 
fies him with Bethlehem, Jesse's abode (xi, i ; cf. Mic. v, 2). 
To the wonderful character ascribed to this '' shoot out of 
the stock of Jesse " is appended a glowing description of 
regenerated nature (xi, 6-9), and then the universalized 
prediction : '' And it shall come to pass in that day, that 
the root of Jesse, that standeth for an ensign of the peoples, 
unto him shall the nations seek ; and his resting-place shall 
be glorious " (xi, 10). A prophecy of return from exile and 
dispersion follows, with restored harmony between the dis- 
cordant sections of Israel (xi, 11-16). 

One more announcement belongs to the same chain of 
predictions, though it goes a step beyond the Messianic in- 
dividual. It is of the Messianic realm. It comes in the 
part of Isaiah where the prophet is working most strenu- 
ously to bring princes and leaders to their right mind, as 
they are nervously groping for human devices against the 
Assyrian peril now imminent. Whether the timid piety 
and sincerity of Hezekiah did anything to color the ideal 
is only conjectural. It is the picture of a perfected realm 
wherein, under the reign of a righteous king and just 
princes, men's eyes shall be open to see things as they are 
and their tongues unloosed to call things by their right 
names ; in other words, where a full-orbed personality shall 
exert its gracious power among men, '* and a man shall be 
as a hiding-place from the wind, and a covert from the 
tempest, as streams of water in a dry place, as the shade 
of a great rock in a weary land " (xxxii, 1-8). In this 
noble portrayal of ideal civic conditions, one of the most 

[178] 



THE STRESS OF PROPHECY 

impressive passages of the Old Testament, Isaiah of Jeru- 
salem brings to its climax the symbolic undertone by which 
he reveals the Messianic values germinating under the 
surface of history and giving assurance of a redeemed and 
enlightened mankind. 

IV 

The Crisis Met and Weathered. In the middle of the 
Book of Isaiah, following upon a portion (xxxiv, xxxv) in 
which, as is his wont, the prophet's vision broadens into 
apocalypse, there is inserted a section of narrative prose 
(xxxvi-xxxix), which, recounting the issue of the Assyrian 
suspense and crisis, serves with eminent fitness to round 
off the prophecy of the First Isaiah. These chapters, sub- 
stantially identical with chapters xviii, 13, to xx, 19, of the 
Second Book of .Kings, are evidently from the same hand. 
Whether Isaiah or some other historian was the writer, and 
whether inserted here from Kings or vice versa, are inter- 
esting but somewhat profitless questions. In the condensed 
history of the Sennacherib campaign given in 2 Chron. 
xxxii, both *' the vision of Isaiah the prophet the son of 
Amoz " and the ''book of the kings of Judah and Israel" 
are referred to as authority for the more extended account 
which the annalist does not profess to give (2 Chron. xxxii, 
32) ; and in a previous passage Isaiah the son of Amoz is 
named as the historian of an earlier reign (2 Chron. xxvi, 
22). It seems not unfair, therefore, to attribute to the 
seer-archivist Isaiah this section common to Isaiah and 
Kings ; it is at any rate in eminently fitting place and 
function, and quite in harmony with the prophet's general 
plan and message. 

In order to realize from the Biblical point of view how 
this momentous crisis of Israel's history was met and 
weathered, we will remember that the prophet had in mind 
an event of both near and remote significance, which could 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

not all be compassed by visible facts. It was to be a de 
liverance at once immediate and unfinal ; and beyond it, 
adumbrated in the whole symbolic undertone, was the fore- 
gleam of spiritual enlightenment and redemption. There 
was to be in it an element felt as divine : an enlargement 
of the inner life the germs of which were already active in 
the nation. '' For," said the prophet to the incredulous scof- 
fers, ''the bed is shorter than that a man can stretch him- 
self on it ; and the covering narrower than that he can 
wrap himself in it. For Jehovah will rise up as in mount 
Perazim, he will be wroth as in the valley of Gibeon ; that 
he may do his work, his strange work, and bring to pass 
his act, his strange act" (xxviii, 20, 21). But it was not of 
the unbelieving nobles alone that he was mindful ; not only 
of those who by the marvelous outcome must be made to 
see, but also of that hidden, unnoticed class who already 
had it in them to believe. In other words, his prophecy 
was concerned alike with the welfare of the realm and the 
destiny of the remnant. And the history is brought to a 
pass where the interests of both these are centered in his 
one personality. 

As the crisis approached Isaiah, by a tremendous venture 
of faith, staked his whole prophetic credit on two concrete 
On the Part issucs I the inviolability of Jerusalem against the 
of the Realm onset of Sennacherib (xxxvii, 33, 34), and less 
outspokenly, the perpetuity of the Davidic throne and sover- 
eignty (see ix, 7 ; xvi, 5 ; xxxviii, 5 ; cf. Iv, 3). Both these 
elements of his faith came to crucial test at different times 
in his career, and for the truth of both reassuring signs 
from Jehovah were vouchsafed. 

For meeting the Assyrian onset neither king, princes, 
nor people were keyed up to the faith that breathed through 
every utterance of the prophet. When, in the early months 
of the invasion the fortified cities of Judah were taken, 
King Hezekiah tried to buy immunity for his capital by 

[180] 



THE STRESS OF PROPHECY 

paying an erlormous tribute, stripping the temple of its gold 
decorations to do it ; a fact recorded in the history of the 
kings (2 Kings xviii, 13-16) and in the inscription of Sen- 
nacherib, but not in the Book of Isaiah. When, however, 
in spite of this the summons was sent back for surrender 
and arrogantly presented, recourse was had as in a last 
extremity to the prophet ; and his response was a magnifi- 
cent message of defiance and prediction of disaster to the 
Assyrian king : "The virgin daughter of Zion hath despised 
thee and laughed thee to scorn ; the daughter of Jerusalem 
hath shaken her head at thee. . . . Because of thy raging 
against me, and because thine arrogancy is come up into 
mine ears, therefore will I put my hook in thy nose, and 
my bridle in thy lips, and I will turn thee back by the way 
by which thou camest. . . . For I will defend this city to 
save it, for mine own sake, and for my servant David's 
sake" (xxxvii, 21-35). The prediction was signally fulfilled 
by a miraculous pestilence in Sennacherib's army, followed 
by an ignominious withdrawal to his own land and eventu- 
ally by his assassination (xxxvii, 36-38 ; cf. vss. 7, 34)'.-^ 
This was the palpable sign for the blear-eyed nation that 
must be ijiade to see, a token that their God w^as real and 
had them, in spite of their recreancy, in His care. • 

The Davidic throne and dynasty too, concerning which 
there had been much cherished prophecies (cf. 2 Sam. vii, 
13, 16), had its perils, which did not miss the reassuring 
sign from Jehovah. It was out of the conspiracy to dethrone 
King Ahaz, it wdll be remembered, and to set up an alien 
in his place, thus deposing the Davidic line, that the sign 
of Immanuel arose, which began the Messianic series con- 
firming "the sure mercies of David" (cf. Iv, 3). This of 

1 There is some obscurity in the accounts of this invasion, with its two 
demands of surrender ; and it is maintained by many that the histories in 
2 Kings and Isaiah combine the campaign of 701 B.C. with another made 
about a decade later, — the retreat belonging to one and the pestilence to 
the other. 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

.course promises perpetuity in a spiritual rather than poUtical 
sense ; but it is all the more real for that. The later case 
of King Hezekiah's mortal sickness, however, healed by 
special act of Jehovah (xxxviii, i-8), had a more direct 
bearing ; for if fifteen years were added to the king's life 
(vs. 5) the sickness occurred three years before there was 
an heir to the throne (cf. 2 Kings xxi, i). This manifesta- 
tion of Jehovah's care and purpose would be of great value 
to the king's timid and wavering faith, as was the deliverance 
of the city to the nation in general. 

The last note of prophecy from the First Isaiah leaves 
the way open in an interesting manner for the supplemen- 
tary matter of the Second Isaiah. It comes from Hezekiah's 
one serious lapse from devout wisdom (cf. 2 Chron. xxxii, 
31) when he, perhaps with an alliance in mind, showed his 
kingdom's treasures to Merodach-Baladan, king of Babylon 
(xxxix) ; which gives the prophet occasion, a century before 
the prediction is fulfilled, to prophesy the Chaldean cap- 
tivity, for which the succeeding century is to be a spiritual 
and educative preparation, and near the close of which the 
Isaian strain of prophecy is resumed. With this prediction 
the work of Isaiah of Jerusalem, as we have it„ is done. 
How long he lived after he had done so much to meet and 
weather the Assyrian crisis is unknown. Tradition has it 
that he suffered martyrdom under King Manasseh, the son 
and successor of Hezekiah. No nobler martyr ever lived ; 
no greater literary and spiritual force in a critical time. 

From the time very early in his prophetic career when 
Isaiah named his eldest son Shear-jashub, ''a remnant shall 
In Behalf of return," the character and fortunes of the rem- 
the Remnant nant, whatever we are to understand by that 
term, were close to his heart. In a true sense Vv^e may say 
the idea of the remnant strikes the keynote of Isaiah's mes- 
sage. This idea is closely connected with the imagery and 
terminology used by both Isaiah and Micah in what I have 

[182] 



THE STRESS OF PROPHECY 

called the symbolic undertone. It is of importance, there- 
fore, that we consider what the prophet's remnant is, and 
what he means by its return. 

" Except Jehovah of hosts had left unto us a very small 
remnant," he says in his introductory chapter, ''we should 
have been as Sodom, we should have been like unto 
Gomorrah " (i, 9). There had not been enough righteous 
in those ancient cities to save them (cf. Gen. xviii, 22-33). 
In this city of Jerusalem, so full of '' wickedness and wor- 
ship," there were barely enough to warrant escape from the 
fate that overtook them. Then, when the prophet, going 
on to denounce the ''rulers of Sodom" and "people of 
Gomorrah " for the crass iniquities to which their elaborate 
rituals furnish no restraint, pleads like Micah for a plain 
religion (i, 10-17), and when, receiving his call, he feels 
the torpid obtuseness to spiritual things which prevents the 
people from turning again and being healed (vi, 10), we 
can realize by contrast whom he means by the remnant. 
Not those who will eventually return from literal exile — 
though the imminence of captivity furnishes the symbol — 
but those w^ho have it in them to turn from darkness to 
light, from iniquity to righteousness (cf. xxx, 15). It is the 
few who in the midst of dirt have kept clean, who in the 
riot of corruption have retained a godly integrity, who in 
the haste and turmoil of invasion have kept their faith. 
The saving nucleus, the redeeming element, in a degenerate 
state, it is they who, when the disintegration gets beneath 
the grade of moral and spiritual survival, " shall return," 
and shall be the hope of Israel. 

In tracing the ideal mission of this remnant, Isaiah, as 
we have seen, employs the symbolism of the begetting and 
rearing of a child ; beginning with the holy seed and the 
predicted Immanuel child, and going on to the completed 
Messianic picture. This is his idea individualized until it 
becomes the ruling personal power at the heart of men and 

['83] 



GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

nations ; an idea which can be reaHzed only in some indefi- 
nite future. But meanwhile this regenerating spirit must be 
cultivated and distributed. The child must as it were become 
children ; the remnant increased to become a growing and 
eventually a controlling power in a renewed nation. For 
this he labors, to this he shapes his symbolical conceptions ; 
it is as if the daughter of Zion were in travail to bring forth 
a worthy offspring. We have seen with what thankless 
results the prophet has labored for a sincere faith. In the 
midst of his endeavor he complains: "Like as a woman 
with child, that draweth near the time of her deliveiy, is in 
pain and crieth out in her pangs ; so we have been before 
thee, O Jehovah. We have been with child, we have been 
in pain, we have as it were brought forth wind ; we have 
not wrought any deliverance in the earth ; neither have the 
inhabitants of the world fallen" (xxvi, 17, 18), The spiritual 
birth, if hard in the individual, is correspondingly so on the 
national scale. 

King Hezekiah, a man of fine and devout but not resolute 
personality, was a sincere and consistent disciple of Isaiah ; 
and it seems clear that he had adopted and was trying to 
follow out the prophet's ideas. Not only was his personal 
trust in Jehovah sincere and steadfast ; he had sought also 
to win his people from idolatrous superstition (see 2 Kings 
xviii, 3-6). All that is recorded of him is of very different 
tenor from the attitude of the princes described in Isa. xxviii, 
14—16. When the summons to surrender came, the appeal 
that he sent to the prophet was expressed not in political 
nor diplomatic language but in prophetic terms, the very 
terms indeed of the prophet's symbolic undertone. '' This 
day," he said, ''is a day of trouble, and of rebuke, and of 
contumely ; for the children are come to the birth, and there 
is not strength to bring forth. It may be Jehovah thy God 
will hear the words of Rabshakeh, whom the king of Assyria 
his master hath sent to defy the living God, and will rebuke 

[.84] 



THE STRESS OF PROPHECY 

the words which Jehovah thy God hath heard : wherefore 
Hft up thy prayer for the remnant that is left " (xxxvii, 3, 4). 
It would seem from this that he shared in the prophet's 
idea of a new life to be born, a regenerate Israel, and that 
his sympathies were not with the dominant majority but with 
the remnant. But the nation, as such, had not yet reached 
that assured stage of spiritual development, that integrity of 
character and conscience, where it could afford to surrender. 
It was in truth too early for Judah to enter upon its dis- 
tinctive mission in the world. A century of reprieve was 
needed for Israel's redeeming personality to be born and 
reach the vigor by w^hich it could cope with exile and dis- 
persion. The saving remnant must become a determining 
energy and redeeming element. So Hezekiah's prayer for 
deliverance was heard, and the prophet's intrepid faith was 
vindicated. The Assyrian peril was removed in a way that 
to Judah had all the effect of a miracle ; -^ and the prophet's 
prediction was : "The remnant that is escaped of the house 
of Judah shall again take root downward, and bear fruit up- 
ward. For out of Jerusalem shall go forth a remnant, and 
out of Mount Zion they that shall escape " (xxxvii, 31, 32). 
The prophecy of the First Isaiah, symbolized from his 
earliest activity in the name of his eldest son, still held 
good, and with it the idealized promise of One who was 
portrayed as Child, as Conqueror, and as the King of a 
regenerate and enlightened realm. 

1 May not the passage in Second Isaiah (Isa. Ixvi, 7-9) describing the 
new birth of a nation be a reminiscence of this wonderful deHverance and 
its effect, expressed in the same imagery ? 



[ 185 ] 



CHAPTER V 

AFTER THE REPRIEVE 

[From 701 to 586 B.C.] 

WITH the sudden release of Jerusalem and Judah from 
the long-standing menace of Assyria, in 701 B.C., 
there came a corresponding revulsion. It was like opening 
the eyes of the nation to the true source and secret of 
their welfare ; a visible proof that trust in Jehovah was 
not misplaced. For the first time since the cloud of in- 
vasion and tyranny had first appeared on the horizon, in 
the days of Amos and Hosea, the people of Jehovah could 
breathe freely. True, the revulsion caused by Sennacherib's 
retreat came to a people scarred and crippled. The northern 
kingdom had fallen, and exiles from it were scattered in the 
lands beyond the Euphrates (cf. 2 Kings xviii, 11). Judah 
had been ravaged with the loss of forty-six towns and over 
two hundred thousand inhabitants (cf. Isa. i, 7 ; vi, 11, 12 ; 
and the Taylor cylinder). The nation, when not intriguing 
with Egypt and Ethiopia against Assyria, had been obliged 
to buy off the invader by the payment of enormous tribute 
(cf. 2 Kings xviii, 14-16). But now, for a time at least, 
the cloud of anxiety and suspense was lifted. The people 
whose lands had been ravaged could sow their fields again 
and resume their peaceful occupations ; it was the sign, 
Isaiah told them, that the long peril was over (xxxvii, 30). 
Men of thought and letters could now turn their attention 
to the deeper meanings that lay infolded in the nation's 
strange experience. The miraculous deliverance, with the 
spiritual emancipation it caused, was one of the cardinal 

[.&6] 



AFTER THE REPRIEVE 

points of Israel's history ; it opened a century's sound and 
healthy growth. *' Israel," says Professor George Adam 
Smith, ''never wholly lost the grace of the baptism where- 
with she was baptized in 701.'*' ^ 

The revulsion found the people's heart not wholly un- 
prepared for its purposed avails. Isaiah had indeed worked 
An Enlarged ^^ cross-purposes with a stupid and perverse 
Literary Con- aristocracy ; but with the remnant whose spirit- 
ual susceptibilities were awake he was in hearty 
fellowship and sympathy, and he had their faith and good 
will in return. It is of this element of the nation's life, 
indeed, that we are mainly to predicate the sound and 
healthy growth just mentioned. In his effort to create out 
of a degenerate nation a nation regenerate, it was with the 
remnant, the hidden repository of the nation's better self, 
that he must begin ; and, as we have seen, he symbolized 
that beginning by the predicted birth of the Immanuel 
child. 2 It was the birth of a forward-looking, resilient 
faith ; and like an infant that faith must be nursed and 
tended until its assured life could induce in the nation at 
large a current of new energy and vision. Such was Isaiah's 
nobly conceited yet thankless task ; whose effects could not 
well be seen until with the sudden release from the Assyrian 
peril an encouraging access of communal faith was precipi- 
tated, as it were, from solution. But while he was thus 
nursing to power the spiritual and prophetic sense in his 
people, another effect of the movement was making itself 
felt ,in the enlarged literary consciousness which, so far as 
we can trace, came in with the career of Isaiah and the 
reign of King Hezekiah ; a consciousness which, touched 
with the prophetic spirit, wrought to revive and enrich 
the various lines of literary activity, poetic, didactic, and 
legislative. 

1 Smith, "The Book of Isaiah" (in The Expositor's Bible), Vol. I, 
p. 365. ^ See above, p. 176. 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL. LITERATURE 

It is the object of the present chapter to take note of 
this Uterary movement from the time of its great initiator 
Isaiah to the beginning of the Chaldean exile — a period 
of something over a century: 

I. Men of Insight at Work 

The sad dearth of spiritual insight — or what is called 
vision — in the Jewish nation of the time calls forth bitter 
complaint alike from Micah (cf . • Mic. iii, 5-7) and Isaiah. 
We have seen with what keenness the latter senses the con- 
trasted density of his people's mind as soon as the live 
coal from the altar has touched his lips (vi, 10) ; it is the 
materialized national consciousness against which he has to 
struggle all his life. Later in his career he puts his com- 
plaint into somewhat more definite terms. '* For Jehovah," 
he says, '' hath poured out upon you the spirit of deep 
sleep, and hath closed your eyes, the prophets ; and your 
heads, the seers, hath he covered. And all vision is be- 
come unto you as the words of a book that is sealed, which 
men deliver to one that is learned, saying, ' Read this, I 
pray thee ' ; and he saith, ' I cannot, for it is "sealed ' : and 
the book is delivered to him that is not learned, saying, 
'Read this, I pray thee'; and he saith, 'I am not learned'" 
(xxix, 10-12). Going on then to give the reason for this 
torpid state of things, he explains that their service of 
Jehovah is lip service -with no heart in it, and that their 
fear of God is a theoretical fear, a commandment of men 
learned by rote (xxix, 13). When therefore the purpose 
of God comes to pass, there is . no ability in the men of 
culture and intellect to understand and appropriate it. 

A strong indictment this, and unless we allow for Isaiah's 
prophetic point of view and intensity of conviction rather 
more sweeping than the case warrants. The prophet had 
more supporters, perhaps, than he was aware of : men who 

[.88] 



AFTER THE REPRIEVE 

in their way felt the stirring of the times and if not by 
vision or by creating new ideas, yet by conserving the 
undying values of the old, contributed their quota to the 
volume of literary and spiritual activity. Let us take note 
of these, as evidences of their work come to light in the 
history and the literature. 



Isaiah's Vision of Destiny. At the head of the list, 
however, must be placed the name of the prophet whose 
utterances are the soul of the whole movement. We have 
already considered Isaiah's ''word" for his land and gen- 
eration ; ^ but his book as a whole is called ''the Vision," 
and rightly so, whether the name was given early or late. 
The work of Isaiah is referred to under that name as 
authority for " the rest of the acts of Hezekiah and his 
good deeds," in 2 Chron. xxxii, 32 ; but whether Second 
Isaiah was joined with the First when that book was 
written is uncertain. By Ecclesiasticus too, who attributes 
the whole book to Isaiah, he is called " great and faithful 
in his vision " (Ecclus. xlviii, 22). It is as a vision that 
the body of Isaianic prophecy is known and valued by 
later generations ; or as Ecclesiasticus puts it, " he showed 
the things that should be to the end of time, and the 
hidden things or ever they came " (Ecclus. xlviii, 22). As 
our next step in the study of Isaiah, therefore, let us here 
consider, as we have proposed,^ the vision element of his 
prophecy ; the pervading trait, indeed, which from the 
beginning charged his words with power. 

To get at the enlarged sense in which the term " vision " 
is here to be understood, we may glance at the two other 
prophetic books to which the title is given : the books of 
Obadiah and Nahum. In still another book too, the Book 
of Habakkuk, though that title is not given at the beginning, 

1 See above, pp. 167 ff. ^ See above, p. 168. 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

the vision character is prominent (see Hab. ii, 1-3), and 
the general tone of the prophecy corresponds. In all these 
The Broad- books we note one common trait : they deal not 
ened Horizon ^ith the sins and calamities of Israel, or with 
her civic and religious affairs, but with the character and 
destiny of other nations : Obadiah with Edom, Nahum with 
Nineveh, Habakkuk taking occasion from Chaldea, whose 
approach is imminent in his time, but really concerned more 
with the spiritual condition of the world at large. In other 
words, their horizon was bfoadened : their vision was touched 
with the sense of the greater world beyond the confines of 
the Judean land, a world where, whatever its prestige or 
material might, the same forces of human and divine nature 
were at work as at home, and where as at home character 
and destiny were a calculable sequence of cause and effect. 
That was a great truth for the teachers of a small and 
harassed people to realize. Of all these so-called visions, 
however, the Book of Isaiah is far and away the most 
luminous and comprehensive. Not only the earliest in 
time, it is also the type and pioneer of all this species of 
prophecy. This large vision character is evident from the 
outset. We have seen how Isaiah the son of Amoz begins 
his "word" with the prediction that in the latter days ''the 
mountain of Jehovah's house shall be established on the top 
of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills ; and 
all nations shall flow unto it" (Isa. ii, 2-4); and how in 
consequence of the spiritual power and grace flowing from 
this center the nations shall learn righteousness and unlearn 
war. This is the real theme, the ever-potent keynote of his 
book ; it projects his whole prophecy on the world scale. 
He has indeed to work with the civic and religious affairs 
of his time and land ; has to nurse the embryotic faith of 
a remnant ; has to keep the city inviolate and the Davidic 
dynasty intact ; but in all these temporal issues he keeps 
the larger ideal bright and true, and out of them he evolves 

[190] 



AFTER THE REPRIEVE 

the wonderful concept of a Personage, an individual Sover- 
eign, in whose wisdom and power the ideal may be made 
real. The whole section of the book comprised in the first 
twelve chapters maps out, as it were, the field of this vision 
in its relation to Israel. And if in his generation the son 
of Amoz must needs leave the story of. the vision only 
half told, yet. like the ball of the gamester he leaves it in 
position for the next play. 

So far as to the general tone and pressure of the First 
Isaiah's prophecy. The literary make-up of the book as we 
have it, whether determined by him or by later editors and 
supplementers, fully justifies the title ''vision" as applied to 
the whole. The three main divisions into which the book 
naturally falls — like three acts in a mighty five-act drama 
— are all led up to and culminate in apocalyptic vaticina- 
tions and songs (chaps, xii, xxiv-xxvii, xxxiv-xxxv), all 
expanding the specific prophecies of their sections into the 
more spacious proportions of world vision. The middle 
section of these (chaps, xiii-xxvii, let us call it Act II) is 
quite in the vision character exemplified in Obadiah and 
Nahum, — consisting as it mainly does of a series of ora- 
cles on the nations which have had relations with Judah ; 
in which oracles their character and destiny are assessed 
according to the same spiritual principles that govern the 
prophet. Those nations, like Judah, are in the care of and 
subject to the judgments of Jehovah of Hosts, the Holy 
One of Israel. Such is the broadened horizon that with the 
vision of Isaiah has entered into the purview of prophecy. 

Notes, i . The Utterance of the Vision. Closely connected with the 
term '' vision " another word now appears in prophecy : the word 
" burden " or '' oracle." It is indeed the first title of Nahum (that 
prophecy has two titles, Nah. i, i), and the only tide of Habakkuk 
(Hab. i, i). This word (Heb. massa\ lit. "a lifting up," as of a song 
or oracular utterance) is first used in this sense by Isaiah, who in 
chapters xiii to xxiii of his book prefixes it to a long series of utter- 
ances, all of the same general character. The word " burden " is to the. 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

word " vision " as announcement to a heard or seen revelation. The 
idea of vision and burden is described in a realistic way by Habakkuk : 
" I will stand upon my watch, and set me upon the tower, and I will 
look forth to see what he will speak with me, and what I shall answer 
concerning my complaint. And Jehovah answered me, and said, ' Write 
the vision, and make it plain upon tablets, that he may run that readeth 
it'" (Hab. ii, i, 2). A similar realistic touch is given by Isaiah, in his 
announcement of the fall of Babylon (Isa. xxi, 6-9), in " the burden of 
the desert of the sea." 

2. The Plan of the Book of Isaiah. It may be well to set down 
here, for convenience of reference, the main divisions into which, in 
my view, the Book of Isaiah falls. My literary study of it, as com- 
pleted, has resulted in my regarding it as essentially one theme, like 
a sublime dramatic movement, in five acts, in which the action is carried 
on not by dialogue or dramatis personae but by the prophet as a kind 
of chorus, as in the Greek drama. It is of course in a highly accom- 
modated sense that this analogy of the drama is suggested. 

The following outline is here submitted : 

Proem, i 

Act I. The latent peril and potency in Israel and Judah, i-xii. 
Act II. The inner torsion and sterility of the nations, xiii-xxvii. 
Act III. The first onset: the Assyrian crisis, xxviii-xxxix. 

Intermezzo and Shift of Scene, xl 

Act IV. The second onset : the Chaldean experience, xli-lv. 
Act V. Clearing the way for a new universe, Ivi-lxvi. 

An analysis so condensed as this is of course not self-explaining ; we 
must look to the book itself for that. 

Not only is the horizon of Isaiah's vision broadened from 
a provincial to a world outlook. The plane of vision also 
^ ^^ is so much hi^^her that he .can look down as it 

From the ^ , 

Higher Plane were from a third dimension into the heart of 

of Vision human nature, seeing the essential manhood, or 
the lack of it, in all mankind. He is the first to import 
into prophecy this extraordinarily penetrative power of spir- 
itual vision ; the first, and with his later collaborator the 
Second Isaiah, the ablest. We see this in the remarkable 
series of " burdens," or oracles, which in the second section 

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AFTER THE REPRIEVE 

of his book (Act II, chaps, xiii-xxiii) take up one by one the 
character of each of the leading peoples with which Israel 
had relations. It is not merely because they are enemies 
of Israel that he denounces them, nor is his tone always 
denunciatory. It is as often in pity and promise. The 
plight of Babylon comes first,^ as most typical and far- 
reaching (xiii, xiv) ; and he has in mind, apparently, not so 
much her military ferocity as her ancient culture, a culture 
that has made her the intellectual and spiritual exactress 
(see xiv, 4, margin) of the world. The day of Jehovah is 
at hand, and all her culture is of no avail to meet it (xiii, 
6-8) ; her plight is spiritual sterility and impotence, — "I 
will make a man more rare than fine gold, even a man 
than the pure gold of Ophir " (xiii, 12). In the Second 
Isaiah this trait is taken up repeatedly and pushed to satire 
(cf. xli, 21-24; xlvii, 12-15), Of like nature are the in- 
dictments brought against other nations : pride and arro- 
gancy in Moab (xvij 6) ; spiritual leanness and barrenness in 
northern Israel (xvii, 4, 5) ; fatuous ideas and counsels in 
Egypt (xix, 11-15); and frivolous lack of foresight in his 
own city (xxii, 1-14), the place which, of all others, should 
be "the valley of vision." All these he regards, however, 
with the sympathy of a true missionary spirit, and from 
their fate extracts some connection with the enlightening 
influence of Israel. He has a good word even for Assyria ; 
and in spite of the severity of chapter x, 5-19, admits that 
nation, after its work is done, to fellowship in Jehovah's 
great purpose : " In that day," he says, "shall Israel be the 
third with Egypt and with Assyria, a blessing in the midst 
of the earth ; for that Jehovah of hosts hath blessed them, 
saying, ' Blessed be Egypt my people, and Assyria the work 

1 There are indications (if we ignore the heading) that the chapters on 
Babylon are by an exihc writer; but in all this section there is doubtless 
a predominating amount of Isaiah's work, and all is in his characteristic 
vein. We will remember that the assembling and completing of the book 
were done at a later period. 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

of my hands, and Israel mine inheritance'" (xix, 24, 25). 
It takes a vision both broad and deep, a vision tolerant 
with the outlasting grace of God, to utter such prophecies as 
this. And such is the vision of destiny opened and bravely 
maintained through his life by Isaiah the son of Amoz. 

II 

Stimulus of a Royal Patron. It is in Isaiah indeed 'that 
we find the central and dominant personal force of his 
generation ; but it is not to be supposed that a literary 
utterance so mature as his was a strange or solitary phe- 
nomenon. An author connotes an audience ; a new current 
of ideas, a fitting channel in which to run and prosper. 
Isaiah was not alone : we have already seen what an effi- 
cient work-fellow he had in his contemporary Micah. The 
two together succeeded in launching not only a new order 
of prophetic ideal but to some extent a mold of concepts, 
a prophetic terminology, for the era succeeding. We have 
seen also how, when the summons came from Sennacherib 
requiring the answer that should test Israel's faith. King 
Hezekiah's despondent message to Isaiah was couched in 
the terms of his prophetic vocabulary : '' The children are 
come to the birth, and there is not strength to bring forth " 
(Isa. xxxvii, 3). We seem to see from this that King Heze- 
kiah was quite in sympathy with the work of Isaiah, and 
sincerely desirous to share in the prophet's intrepid confi- 
dence, but perhaps had neither the backing of his nobles 
nor a large enough '' remnant " of the people to make his 
faith an assured strength. 

But the Assyrian crisis revealed only one aspect of the 
king's character. It was, in fact, not his relations with 
foreign affairs and invasions which stood as the chief dis- 
tinction of Hezekiah's reign. It was rather his work in 
the domestic upbuilding of the kingdom, — work designed 
to promote a sounder religious and moral fiber in the heart 

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AFTER THE REPRIEVE 

of the people. In this he would have the inspiration and 
support of the statesman-prophet Isaiah, who according to a 
Jewish tradition was his tutor in his younger days ; but also as 
king he could furnish an important stimulus on his own part. 
We have noted the' pleas of both Micah and Isaiah for 
a plain and common-sense religion, a religion that should 
A Religious ^e neither an ostentatious luxury nor a self- 
ciearing-up tormenting burden (Mic. vi, 8; Isa. i, i6). Both 
pleas were urged in the face of the religious chaos of the 
time ; the people, especially the upper classes, being infatu- 
ated with a complex syncretism of idolatries and superstitions 
imported from the surrounding nations (see Isa. ii, 6-9), 
and their moral intuitions darkened by mediumship and 
necromancy (cf. Isa. viii, 19-22). There was sore need of 
a religion of plain sense ; and Hezekiah's sympathies were 
sincerely in that direction. He began, it would seem, with 
the inveterate old superstitions which had clung to the wor- 
ship of the country people since the time of Moses. " He 
removed the high places," the historian says, ''and brake 
the pillars, and cut down the Asherah : and he brake in 
pieces the brazen serpent that Moses had made: for unto 
those days the children of Israel did burn incense to it : 
and he called it Nehushtan," — that is, a piece of brass 
(2 Kings xviii, 4). This last item of his reform indicates 
his object : to clear away excrescences of worship and call 
things by their right names, — a step toward the honest 
view of life prophesied of the perfect realm wherein a king 
should reign in righteousness and princes rule in justice 
(Isa. xxxii, 4-8). It was, so far as it went, a movement 
toward both a religious and an intellectual clearing-up, an 
identification of religion with reason and sturdy sense. Re- 
actions followed in the succeeding reign, for old errors and 
superstitions die hard ; but the hidden effects of King 
Hezekiah's reform were as great in one way as w^ere those 
of the more famous reform under King Josiah in another. 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

Another important and very characteristic undertaking 
of King Hezekiah is recorded by the Chronicler, who de- 
rives much of his later-written history from the Temple 
archives. It was a reorganization, or perhaps we may better 
say a resuscitation, of the Temple service, — since according 
to the same historian King Ahaz had shut the Temple 
doors (2 Chron. xxviii, 24). In connection with this work 
he instituted a great Passover celebration,, the most notable 
since Solomon (2 Chron. xxx, 26) — a kind of reunion, or 
Old Home Week, for Israel, which was observed with such 
zest that the whole service was repeated (2 Chron. xxx, 23). 
To this reunion the people of the northern kingdom and 
of the region beyond Jordan were invited — another indica- 
tion of Hezekiah 's largeness of heart and good will — and 
a few complied, though the invitation was generally scorned 
(2 Chron. xxx, i, 10-12). This, though somewhat crude 
and tentative, was a step toward that centralization of wor- 
ship for which King Josiah's time, a century later, was better 
prepared ; it was also a step toward that unity of the spirit 
which, beginning with a remnant, was destined some day 
to be the strength of Israel. And it was for such ele- 
mental virtues — unity of spirit, clarity of mind, loyalty to 
Jehovah — that Hezekiah afforded to his people, high and 
lowly, the stimulus of a royal patron. 

Ill 

Treasures from the Older Literature. Of the general 
literary activity of King Hezekiah 's time not much is said ; 
enough, however, to warrant a reasonable inference. A 
time which could support the wonderful creative utterance 
of an Isaiah, and which could respond though imperfectly 
to Hezekiah's mission of tolerance and good sense, would 
not be barren of literary fruitfulness and appreciation. There 
is reason to believe that in his love of liberal learning as 

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AFTER THE REPRIEVE 

well as of religion, especially as a student and collector of 
the older stores of literature, he made his reign a period of 
intellectual activity beyond what had been known since the 
days of Solomon, and gave an impulse which during the 
succeeding century rivaled to a notable degree the matured 
scholarship of the Chaldean exile. 

In an earlier chapter, tracing the primitive differentiation 
of literary activities,^ we noted two native forms, the song 
and the mashal ; forms inchoate and undergoing oral shap- 
ing in David's and Solomon's time, but destined in their 
finished development as psalms and proverbs to bear through 
centuries the stamp of these monarchs' names. We come 
in sight of these psalms and proverbs in King Hezekiah's 
reign and find that he and the men of his time bear 
an important part, perhaps a determinative part, in their 
collection and preservation. 

According to the Chronicler, when King Hezekiah re- 
dedicated the temple, the liturgical basis of the service was 
The Collect- ^ ^^^^ choral and orchestral accompaniment to the 
ing of Psalms elaborate ritual of the sacrifice (see 2 Chron. xxix, 
25-28). The ceremonial seems to have been observed with 
intensified zest from the long desuetude into which such 
services had fallen. Its prelude had been the reopening 
and cleansing of the sanctuary which Ahaz had so profaned ; 
and itself was the prelude to the Passover season already 
mentioned, wherein an effort was made at an all- Israel 
reunion. All this was like a return to first principles ; like 
a recourse to the wholesome traditions and personalities of 
the past. The orchestra, made up of the musical guilds 
of long standing, used the time-honored '' instruments of 
David " ; which instruments, it would seem, had made his 
name as famous for musical and inventive skill as is the 
name of Stradivarius or Guarnerius among music lovers 

1 See " Evolution of Literary Types and Functions," pp. 86 ff., above. 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

to-day (cf. Amos vi, 5). For the vocal part of the service 
the Levites were instructed to '' sing praises unto Jehovah 
with the words of David, and of Asaph the seer " (2 Chron. 
xxix, 30). This introduces us to the two men who beyond 
all others are the classics in psalmody, — that blending of 
music with public praise and worship which was the dis- 
tinctive art of the Hebrews. The two names had been 
associated since before the Temple was built, when at the 
first dedicatory service the national worship was inaugurated 
in a tent (i Chron. xvi, 7). As late as the dedication of 
the rebuilt city wall after the return from exile they were 
still remembered : '' For in the days of David and Asaph 
of old there was a chief of the singers, and songs of praise 
and thanksgiving unto God " (Neh. xii, 46). Thus in a 
very intimate sense the most revered king of Israel was 
identified with his people's common worship and sentiment. 
This elaborate service of King Hezekiah's first year was, 
to be sure, a unique occasion ; but it inaugurated a regular 
system of worship in which the king himself could emulate 
his great ancestor David and be to his people as David 
was. That he came to set great store by the Temple 
services with their musical accompaniments is indicated by 
his question when Isaiah promised him recovery from his 
sickness, '' What is the sign that I shall go up to the house 
of Jehovah } " and by the Psalm he wrote (Isa. xxxviii, 
10-20), which ends, 

Jehovah is ready to save me ; 

Therefore we will sing my songs with stringed instruments 

All the days of our life in the house of Jehovah. 

He was of a pietistic and contemplative nature ; devoted 
accordingly to the domestic upbuilding of his realm, and 
to sharing in the peaceful and religious pursuits of his 
common people, rather than to the diplomatic hazards and 
intrigues of his troubled time. One seems to get a reflection 

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AFTER THE REPRIEVE 

of his mood in Psalm cxx, 5, 6, which I am disposed to 
date in his time : 

Woe is me, that I sojourn in Meshech, 

That I dwell among the tents of Kedar ! 

My soul hath long had her dwelling 

With him that hateth peace. 

I am for peace : 

But when I speak, they are for war. 

The Book of Psalms, as we have it complete before us, 
is the Hebrew anthem book. The songs 'contained in it 
were made for use in the Temple service ; but whether ex- 
clusively for the second Temple, as critics maintain, or for 
public worship from the beginning, is at least a debat- 
able question. Tradition maintains inveterately that David 
composed songs for public worship from the time that he 
brought the. ark up from the house of Obed-Edom to the 
tent on Mount Zion and installed Asaph as the leader 
of his primitive orchestra (" Asaph with cymbals sounding 
loud," I Chron. xvi, 5). Concerning the development of 
psalmody, however, from Solomon to the exile, the history 
is silent ; it is equally silent too concerning the develop- 
ment of worship and religious thought. Like our modern 
collections of hymns, the Psalms reflect the devotional needs 
of the congregation, for morning and evening worship, for 
spring and autumn festival occasions, and the like matters 
of regular recurrence ; but besides this they reflect also 
certain great situations and events, such as dedications, the 
coronation or marriage of a king, as also times of national 
distress or peril, and times of deliverance from siege or 
captivity. Individual experience or meditation also plays a 
large, perhaps a leading, part therein, as some large per- 
sonality expresses the deep emotions of his heart. Such 
songs, it is natural to believe, were continually being added 
to, from sources both within and without the Temple, and 
from composers both ancient and modern. 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

In this obscure history of Hebrew psalmody King Heze- 
kiah may be confidently regarded as one of the greatest 
and most systematic collectors. To his age, as it seems to 
me, may be ascribed most of the notes of authorship, and 
the quaint musical titles, which latter are so ancient that 
their meaning is unintelligible to the Greek translators. It 
must be remembered, however, that the Psalms were not 
collected and preserved as literary curiosities, but for current 
use in the worship of a later day. They were subject there- 
fore to continual revision and adaptation to new occasions ; 
to a great extent also, as always in poetry, the new occasion 
would mold its wording and imagery in the more archaic 
terms of the earlier day, and so the old and the new would 
blend in one timeless utterance. This would be the case 
with the so-called Davidic Psalms, for instance ; which, 
rising out of a time of war and uncertainty from enemies, 
succeeded by a time of settledness and peace, would with 
little change suit the similar conditions of Hezekiah's reign 
and the years of deliverance following. 

With the collection of older Psalms would go also the 
composition of new ones. That such songs were written 
and not incorporated in the psalter we see from ''the 
writing " of Hezekiah after his recovery from sickness 
(Isa. xxxviii, 10-20) and the prayer of Habakkuk (Hab. iii), 
which latter was provided like the collected Psalms with 
musical directions. The prophecies of Isaiah, also, contain 
a number of songs which in the manner of the Psalms 
serve as devotional sanctions of the prophetic vision (see 
Isa. xii, xxvi, xxxv). Within the psalter the rebound of 
spirit at the nation's release from Assyria and the impres- 
sion of awe produced upon other nations by its miraculous 
character (cf. 2 Chron. xxxii, 23) seem to be reflected in 
the Psalms at the beginning of Book II of the collection 
(Psa. xlii-xlix) attributed to the '' sons of Korah." Psalms 
cxxiv and cxxvi sound like reminiscences of that release. 

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AFTER THE REPRIEVE 

Our soul is escaped as a bird out of the snare of the fowlers : 
The snare is broken, and we are escaped (cxxiv, 7). 

When Jehovah turned again the captivity of Zion,^ 
We were like unto them that dream. 
Then was our mouth filled with laughter, 
And our tongue with singing : 
Then said they among the nations, 
Jehovah hath done great things for them. 
Jehovah hath done great things for us, 
Whereof we are glad (cxxvi, 1-3). 

These belong to a remarkable group of Psalms, fifteen in 
number (cxx-cxxxiv), called Songs of Degrees (A.V.) or 
Songs of Ascents (R.V.), lit.. Songs of the Steps ; which 
are thought by one scholar ^ to have been collected and so 
named in commemoration hi the fifteen years added to King 
Hezekiah's life after his miraculous recovery from deadly 
illness; see the story, 2 Kings xx, i-ii; Isa. xxxviii ; 
2 Chron. xxxii, 24. The explanation is of course conjec- 
tural like all historical criticism ; but at all events all of 
these Psalms seem to reflect in a striking manner various 
phases of the inner experience of the king and his realm 
during his last fifteen years. 

Note. Within these years fell the deliverance ffom Assyria, as 
also some preceding perplexities (cf. Psa. cxx), the birth of the crown 
prince Manasseh (cf. 2 Kings xxi, i), and perhaps the king's marriage 
(cf. Psa. cxxviii), which assured the continuance of the Davidic dynasty 
(cf. Psa. cxxvii, 3, 4). Nor should we overlook, in reading Psa. cxxxiii, 
the era of brotherly feeling sought in the early part of Hezekiah's reign 
by his Passover celebration (see 2 Chron. xxx, 25-27). 

1 For this line I prefer the simpler translation of the Authorized Version. 

^ J. W. Thirtle, " Old Testament Problems," chaps, i-v. It is only fair 
to say that this explanation of the Songs of Ascents is put by Professor 
G. B. Gray (Hastings' Bib. Diet., art. " Psalms ") among " other ingenious 
but improbable suggestions " which he rejects in favor of a more tra- 
ditional explanation. The present school of Psalm criticism (for example, 
Cheyne and Briggs) is strangely color blind to any history earlier than 
Artaxerxes Ochus. 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

Under the patronage of King Hezekiah also, as it 
appears, the fund of , Wisdom, or mashal, literature was 
The Com- increased by a supplementary section of the Book 
piling of of Proverbs (Prov. xxv-xxix) headed, ''These also 
Prover s ^^^ proverbs of Solomon, which the men of 
Hezekiah king of Judah copied out." This heading in 
itself is significant for the light it throws on the date and 
make-up of the Book of Proverbs, and on the develop- 
ment of this strain of literature. 

The Book of Proverbs, as this heading implies, is a com- 
piled collection, made up of detached utterances of practical 
wisdom and sagacity, doubtless gathered from many sources 
and centers, and making no claim to original composition 
except such as is implied in the general attribution to Solo- 
mon. We have seen in an earlier chapter ^ in what sense 
the term ''of Solomon" is to be taken; the mashals of 
this type are Solomonic in much the same sense as the 
Psalms are Davidic. In continuing to compile Solomonic 
proverbs two and a half centuries after Solomon, the men 
of Hezekiah were confessedly adding to a collection which 
had been accumulating since near the time when Solomon 
"spake three thousand proverbs" (i Kings iv, 32). The 
original heading of this earlier section, " The Proverbs of 
Solomon," appears at chapter x, i ; other headings, imply- 
ing other authors, are at xxii, 17, and xxiv, 23. Differences 
of style in the mashals of the original section (x, i-xxii, 16) 
indicate a variety, perhaps a development, due to age and 
source. The Hezekian compilation, however, is more homo- 
geneous, and in ' general more literary : similes and meta- 
phors are far more numerous than elsewhere in the book, 
and there is a greater tendency to the riddling touch, more 
being left to the reader's thinking powers. This of course 
indicates, among the people at large, an advanced stage of 
literary appreciation. 

1 See above, Chapter II, pp. 85 ff. and 93. 
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AFTER THE REPRIEVE 

The Wisdom literature, of which the Book of Proverbs 
is the most typical and representative product, is relatively 
speaking the secular portion of the Biblical literature. It has 
indeed a sincerely religious and orthodox tissue : it makes 
its Wisdom uncompromisingly synonymous with righteotis- 
ness and in its view wickedness is sheer folly ; but it 
deals with matters of the home and the field and the 
market and the gate, and its precepts are concerned not 
with abstract speculation but with practical conduct. To 
this end it relies not like the prophets on divine revelation 
but on human insight and sagacity ; and this indeed is its 
real distinction. From earliest time the Hebrew lawgiver, 
worshiper, and prophet sought the mind of God ; the He- 
brew sage, in distinction from these, has learned to trust 
the mind of man, and to value its intuitions as authentic 
truth. His wisdom is felt as a native endowment, and not 
dependent on inspiration. 

There are indications that in the time of Hezekiah and 
Isaiah the Solomonic mashal was the most popular form 
of literature;, especially with the leading classes who prided 
themselves on their superior learning and culture. It had 
been brought, as the Hezekian proverbs show, to its highest 
pitch of grace and point and subtlety ; its underlying thesis 
was still unquestioned. The human intuition (Heb. thitshiy- 
yah) seemed sufficient to all things ; and the divine word 
as a realized source of truth was ignored. It was with this 
state of sentiment that Isaiah, who was urging the claim of 
faith and prophetic vision, came in sharpest collision. We 
read this in the notable twenty-eighth chapter of Isaiah. 
They had scorned his austere insistence as so much child- 
ish twaddle (vss. 9, 10), and after turning the tables, on 
them in a wonderful climax of prophecy (vss. 11-22) he 
proceeded to compose a passage in their own popular idiom 
(vss. 23-29) to show that Jehovah also is "wonderful in 
counsel, and excellent in intuition " (vs. 29). This, it seems 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

to me, is illuminative for the literary vogue of the period. 
Isaiah does not condemn the Wisdom utterance of his day ; 
it is indeed, so far as it goes, a noble product ; but he 
would not make it exclusive, and to its human sagacity, 
which is short-sighted and fallible, he would add the divine 
faith and vision which does not err. 

To the collecting of psalms, the literature of piety and 
praise, and to the compiling of proverbs, the literature of 
didactic Wisdom, is rightly to be added in this awakened 
period a new and epoch-making strain, the literature of 
popularized law. This, however, is reserved to the next 
section, to be noted in connection with its effects. ^ 

II. On the Eve of National Transplantation 

We have called the remarkable escape of the Judean 
state from Assyrian captivity a postponement of doom ; ^ 
this because in the natural course of things the nation's 
eventual absorption into the melting-pot of world-empire 
was only a question of time. But time was just now the 
essential element ; for the evolution of the truest Jewish 
character it was like the period from infancy to lusty youth, 
the period of the nursery and the school. In the light of 
the century now intervening the providential motive of this 
postponement is clear. It was in Jehovah's purpose, as 
gradually disclosed by the prophets, that the nation should 
meet its ordeal of overthrow, when it came, not as a 
calamity but as a forward step and an opportunity, not as 
a race unmanned and disintegrated but organically matured 
and intact. To this 'end there was needed this century of 
fundamental education and upbuilding ; there was needed 
also a seasoning of trial and patience. The healthful im- 
pulse to faith and loyalty awakened in the ''remnant" in 
701 must be so deepened and confirmed as to become the 

^ See The Book Found in the Temple, pp. 220 ff. 
2 See above, pp. 157 ff. 

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AFTER THE REPRIEVE 

vital and redeeming spiritual force in the nation's supreme 
mission ; while at the same time the false and corrupting 
elements, hitherto so dominant, must be unmasked and 
discredited. Such was the inner situation of things in the 
kingdom of Judah as it approached its momentous epoch 
of national transplantation. 

Of the kings who from Hezekiah to the Chaldean exile 
had substantial influence on the mind and fortunes of 
Kin f Judah, only two need here be mentioned : 
Judah after Manassch and Josiah, — a third being reserved 
Hezekiah ^^^ another connection. Manasseh, the son and 
successor of Hezekiah, beginning as a boy of twelve and 
reigning fifty-five years, seemed fanatically determined to 
restore all the exotic *' customs from the east " which in 
the time of his grandfather Ahaz were becoming so rife in 
Israel, and to overthrow all the simpler and plainer forms 
which his father Hezekiah had endeavored to establish and 
which the prophets Micah and Isaiah had inculcated. It 
looked like a hopeless return to the sloughs of heathenism, 
and doubtless its fashionable prevalence captivated the 
shallow minds of the wealthier classes ; but its quiet reac- 
tive effect, especially among the land's people, was to 
make the more spiritual faith strike in and become more 
deeply rooted. We can justly infer this from the fact 
that Manasseh resorted to persecution of the prophets, his 
fanaticism even extending to bloodshed ; for persecution, 
the child of fear, connotes something substantial to per- 
secute. The sterling mind of the people was evidently 
becoming formed and enlightened ; Isaiah's impassioned 
eloquence had not been in vain. Meanwhile the land was 
still under tribute to Assyria ; and the Chronicler records 
(2 Chron. xxxiii, 10-13) that Manasseh, taken in chains 
to Babylon, humbled himself before Jehovah, was restored 
to Jerusalem, and '' knew that Jehovah he was God " (2 
Chron. xxxiii, 18). The prayer that he offered in his 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

penitence, or at least one purporting to be his, is given in 
the Apocrypha. He apparently did nothing, however, to 
break up the chaos of religious syncretism that he haci 
done so much to promote ; he became, perhaps, a kind of 
religious connoisseur, ready to welcome whole pantheons 
of deities and to experiment with whole systems of divination 
and necromancy (cf. 2 Kings xxi, 3-6 ; 2 Chron. xxxiii, 
3—6). In his reign the fascinating influence of the world- 
prevailing idolatrous cults seems to have reached its height ; 
amounting, in the king's case, to a fanatical obsession 
not unlike the modern craze for exotic religions, only 
more sincere. 

But his reign marked also, as some signs indicate, the 
turn of the tide. The long and inveterate hankering for 
the crude idolatries of the nations, which had occasioned 
Israel's hardest spiritual fight, was weakening. To the 
matter-of-fact Jewish mind, which could be brought to 
discard the nation's most venerated symbol as ''a piece 
of brass" (cf. 2 Kings xviii, 4), the elaborate inanities of 
heathenism of which Jerusalem was full were becoming 
a surfeit and a drug. To be sure, time was needed and 
ripening good sense to cast their idols '' to the moles and 
to the bats " (cf. Isa. ii, 20), for they were idols of silver 
and gold, and vested interests were bound up with* them ; 
but in the reign of Josiah, who after Amon's two years' 
reign was brought to the throne by the people of the land 
(2 Kings xxi, 24), the w^hole tone and atmosphere of the 
realm seems to have undergone a wholesome change. 
There was a growing disposition to '' ask for the old 
paths, wherein is the good way" (cf. Jer. vi, 16). Josiah 
was only eight years old when he began to reign ; but his 
early training fell into the careful hands of priests and 
seers ; and the fact that he owed his throne not to court 
management but to the people of the land seems to indi- 
cate that the more sterling and sincere element dominated 

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AFTER THE REPRIEVE 

during his years of nonage. The saner mind of Israel 
was escaping from foreign influences and coming to itself. 
Accordingly, in the eighteenth year of his reign, while he 
was still a young man, Josiah was moved to repair the 
Temple and in" place of the showy and luxurious idolatries 
reinstate the simpler time-honored worship. Of the book 
found in the Temple, and its momentous effect on the 
people's subsequent life, the next section is the place to 
speak.i Qf ^Y^Q ^^^^ himself, his personality imbued with 
piety and faith, we may say it made his reign one of the 
great landmarks in Israel's history, causing him to be 
reckoned as one of the three blameless kings of Judah.^ 
It is to be noted, however, that faith and piety, though 
ever so blameless, cannot safely ignore wisdom and sound 
judgment. This was the simple but costly lesson that the 
Jewish people, in this stage of their new-born trust in 
Jehovah, had to learn. In an ill-advised expedition against 
Pharaoh-necoh, as the latter was on his way through 
northern Palestine in a campaign against Assyria, he was 
slain at Megiddo (2 Kings xxiii, 29, 30) ; an event which, 
though causing an unspeakable shock of sorrow, was of 
deep service in divorcing the people's faith from super- 
stition, and thus an important element in the progress of 
''Jehovah's work, his strange work." 

With this sketch of the times in mind, we have now 
to consider the literary products of the century intervening 
between the death of Isaiah and the Chaldean exile. 
We will begin with the prophetic strain broached by the 
northern prophets and carried on by Micah and Isaiah, the 
strain of avowed preparation for the destiny to come. 

1 " The Book Found in the Temple," pp. 220 ff. 

2 " Except David and Hezekiah and Josiah, all committed trespass : 
for they forsook the law of the Most High ; the kings of Judah failed " 
(Ecclus. xlix, 4, with which cf. 2 Kings xxiii, 25). 

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Prophets of the Dies Irae. '' Dies irae, dies ilia " is the 
Vulgate rendering of a clause in Zephaniah (Zeph. i, 15) — 
a clause made memorable in literature and music as the 
first line of a celebrated medieval hymn by Thomas of 
Celano.^ It expresses in briefest compass what we may 
call the watchword of the prophetic order, putting into 
one severe assertion the apocalyptic presage which from 
the beginning loomed with greater or less vividness before 
the literary prophets. A blunt watchword of this kind was 
needed. The inveterate tendency of the Hebrew race w^as 
to presume on their distinction as the covenant people of 
Jehovah, and to define, or rather to assume their destiny in 
terms of conquest, prosperity, immunity — a careless con- 
fidence which eclipsed their true mission in the earth and 
ministered only to worldliness and moral indifference. It 
must accordingly be the business of the prophets from 
the beginning to disabuse the people's mind of this self- 
pleasing notion. We see this in one of the earliest of the 
prophetic warnings, given by Amos when the northern 
kingdom was at the height of its prosperity. ''Woe unto 
you," he says, " that desire the day of Jehovah ! Where- 
fore would ye have the day of Jehovah ? It is darkness, 
and not light" (Amos v, 18). Joel also in Judah, drawing 
from the portent of the locust plague, exclaims, '' Alas 
for the day ! for the day of Jehovah is at hand, and as 
destruction from the Almighty shall it come" (Joel i, 15) ; 
a warning which is repeated in Isaiah's oracle against 
Babylon (Isa. xiii, 6). It is natural, perhaps, that the first 
vision of that day should lie within the horizon of Israel's 
fortunes; as Jeremiah expresses it, ''Alas! for that day is 
great, so that none is like it : it is even the time of Jacob's 

1 " Dies irae, dies ilia, 

Solvet sseclum in favilla, 
Teste David cum Sibylla." 

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AFTER THE REPRIEVE 

trouble; but he shall be saved out of it" (Jer. xxx, 7). 
But as the day draws near the vision enlarges ; its apoca- 
lyptic character emerges more to light, until these three 
traits of it stand out : first, the day of Jehovah is not 
bounded by the captivity, but only begins- with that ; 
second, it is not confined to Israel but is due upon all 
the nations ; and third, its wrath and destructive char- 
acter are only the prelude to an era of construction and 
righteousness and peace. And with this consummation 
assured the prophetic vision fades. 

Of all the prophets who have dealt with the coming day 
of Jehovah, Isaiah is incomparably the most lucid and dis- 
criminating ; it is this quality that makes his prophecy so 
truly a vision. With his keen spiritual sympathy he detects 
under the defects of humanity its germinal redeeming traits, 
and under the just wrath of Jehovah his healing mercy 
(cf. Isa. xix, 22). The others, sensitive to the wickedness 
that precipitates the doom, see little - ahead but undiffer- 
entiated wrath. They are like a kind of echo or aftermath 
of what the greater prophets have broached ; giving their 
messages at various times during the century succeeding 
the reprieve, as the day of Jehovah, becoming more immi- 
nent, casts its shadow before. 

Without attempting to fix exact times or specific occa- 
sions, let us endeavor briefly to characterize the prophets 
who from Isaiah to Jeremiah contributed to the literature. 

With a figure that reminds one of Diogenes, but in a 
very different mood, Zephaniah, a lineal descendant of 
Hezekiah, asserts Jehovah's purpose to unearth 
Encountering-^ deadly blight which has invaded the spiritual 
Religious life of Jerusalem, perhaps as a reactive result 
^^ ^ of the uncertain strife of cults and creeds that 
must have confused the fanatical reign of Manasseh and 
the obstinate heathenism of Amon. His prophecy dates 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

from '' the days of Josiah the son of Amon king of 
Judah" (i, i), when the king, the priests, and the prophets 
were strugghng to make a purer reUgious truth prevail. 
But there was a formidable element which only the terrors 
of a dies irce could move, and it is against this class of 
the people that the prophet brings his indictment. ''And 
it shall come to pass at that time," is Jehovah's word, 
'' that I will search Jerusalem with lamps ; and I will 
punish the men that are settled on their lees, that say in 
their heart, Jehovah will not do good, neither will he do 
evil" (i, 12). Men to whom their God has no moral 
meaning ; such were more abhorrent to sound sense in 
Zephaniah's day than in ours. From the general attitude 
of his prophecy we know whom he has in mind : men of 
the leading and fashionable classes, ' ' the princes, and 
the king's sons, and all such as are clothed with foreign 
apparel " (i, 8) ; whose pride of wealth or station or exotic 
culture has atrophied their religious sense. For such men, 
'' settled on their lees " in a religion that means nothing, 
a day of wrath, portentous with glooms and alarms, is im- 
pending. He describes the day, as do other prophets, in 
lurid terms of sight and sense ; such belong to his apoca- 
lyptic idiom ; but the fact that he is seeking thereby to 
rouse a dead conscience shows that the calamity he sees 
has more than a military or political meaning. 

More also than a meaning for Jerusalem and Judea 
alone. The day will overtake the surrounding nations as 
well, Philistia and Moab and Ammon and Ethiopia, and 
at the head of them Assyria with its splendid capital 
Nineveh, ''the joyous city that dwelt carelessly, that said 
in her heart, I am, and there is none beside me" (ii, 15). 
It is a cosmopolitan mess ; and with the pervading un- 
moral sentiment born of pride and luxury these men on 
their lees are involved. *And the terror of the day for 
them all will be the evident sovereignty of the God whom 

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AFTER THE REPRIEVE 

their contempt and reproaches, directed against his people, 
have outraged, "Jehovah will be terrible unto them; for 
he will famish all the gods of the earth ; and men shall 
worship him, every one from his place, even all the isles 
of the nations" (ii, ii). To ''famish all the gods of the 
earth," such is His purpose as disclosed to the growing 
insight of the prophets ; and Zephaniah publishes this 
purpose just when, after a long infatuation with exotic 
cults and customs, they have well-nigh starved the knowl- 
edge and worship of Jehovah. The men of mark in the 
nation have earned a day of darkness and not light. 

In dealing with this class Zephaniah maintains with 
steadfast clearness, as offset to their negativism, the same 
prophetic strain in which Isaiah and Micah launched their 
prophecies a century before. His plea, like theirs, is for 
a plain and vital religion, and for the wholesome spirit of 
the remnant. " Gather yourselves together," he says, 
"yea, gather together, O nation that hath no longing ; ^ 
before the decree bring forth (the day passeth as the 
chaff), before the fierce anger of Jehovah come upon you, 
before the day of Jehovah's anger come upon you. Seek 
ye Jehovah, all ye meek of the earth, that have kept his 
ordinances ; seek righteousness, seek meekness : it may 
be that ye will be hid in the day of Jehovah's anger " 
(ii, 1-3). That is the nation's simple but sufficing safe- 
guard against the peril to come. And that spirit will be 
embodied in a class which is already making itself felt as 
a leavening and integrating power in the nation. " I will 
leave in the midst of thee an afflicted and poor people, 
and they shall take refuge in the name of Jehovah. The 
remnant of Israel shall not do iniquity, nor speak lies; 
neither shall a deceitful tongue be found in their mouth ; 
for they shall feed and lie dOwn, and none shall make 
them afraid" (iii, 12, 13). With this promise made, the 

1 So read, according to ii, i, margin. 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

prophecy which began with stern predictions of woe ends 
with a song (iii, 14-20), in which the large destiny of 
Israel, to be ''a name arid a praise among all the peoples 
of the earth " (iii, 20), obliterates the day of wrath. 

*' Behold, upon the mountains the feet of him that 

bringeth good tidings, that publisheth peace! Keep thy 

feasts, O Judah, perform thy vows; for the 

Describing wicked one shall no more pass through thee; 

the Doom he is Utterly Cut off" (Nah. i, 15 ; cf. Isa. Iii, 7). 

of Nineveh ^ . . ., , . . r ^' c a 

One can imagme with what mtensity 01 reliei the 

prophet Nahum could make this announcement to his peo- 
ple, when he became aware that the great city Nineveh, so 
long the hard tyrant of the world, was doomed. To the large 
prophetic sense this event marked the actual dawn of the 
momentous day of Jehovah, big with fate for the nations ; 
and the vision of it — for this book, it will be noted, is 
*' the vision of Nahum the Elkoshite " — recalled from 
the past the correlative vision of Isaiah. A century before, 
when the Assyrian hordes first overran the Holy Land, sub- 
jugating the kingdom of Israel and all but overwhelming 
Judah, Isaiah had with keen presage mapped out, as it 
were, the ultimate meaning of it all (see Isa. x, 5-27). 
The Assyrian, he maintained, was just '' the rod of 
Jehovah's anger," who, while seeking but his own brutal 
and predatory ends, was " unwittingly working out the severe 
but salutary design of Jehovah by bringing a needed chas- 
tisement and discipline upon the two houses of Israel ; 
and whose yoke, when his oppressive work was done, 
would be lifted from Israel's neck (Isa. x, 27). And now, 
to the spiritual insight of Nahum, the hour of deliverance 
had struck. *' Though I have afflicted thee," he assures 
his people, *' I will afflict thee no more. And now will I 
break his yoke from off thee, and will burst thy bonds 
in sunder" (i, 12, 13). 

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AFTER THE REPRIEVE 

What was the real nature of the yoke so soon to be 
Hfted appears from Jehovah's word, " Out of the house of 
thy gods will I cut off the graven image and the molten 
image" (i, 14), and from the prophet's exhortation ap- 
pended to his good tidings, " Keep thy feasts, O Judah, 
perform thy vows" (i, 15), — in other words, be free to 
resume the native and congenial religious customs. The 
yoke of exotic cults had long been a veritable burden upon 
them. Under Ahaz the infection had been incurred with 
the Assyrian protective alliance ; Hezekiah had enlisted 
only a small and humble remnant against it ; and under 
Manasseh and Amon it had become inveterate. We have 
seen in the prophecy of Zephaniah how the burden became 
a blight, — a medley of gods and grotesque rites (cf . Zeph. 
i, 4-6, 9), and a sad atrophy of care and conscience. 
Truly a grievous yoke, with which civil or financial tyranny 
cannot compare. And now on the source of all this, the 
capital and stronghold of idolatrous religion and culture, 
the day of Jehovah's wrath has dawned. The vision of 
Nahum is the oracle concerning Nineveh. 

It has been remarked that Nahum, unlike other prophets, 
brings no word of indictment against his people. His 
theme gives him no occasion to do so. He has enough to 
do in describing the downfall of the first and most brutal 
of world-empires ; an event which for its far-reaching con- 
sequences to humanity would merit a literature of exposi- 
tion. Nahum 's treatment of it, however, is not expository ; 
does not deal didactically with the moral or motive of the 
thing. Enough for him that it is of Jehovah, and that 
under it we read the consistent character of a God revealed 
to Israel from ancient time and now verified in concrete 
event, — a God who is slow to anger and will not clear 
the guilty (i, 3 ; cf. Ex. xxxiv, 6, 7). For the rest, his 
method is descriptive, we may almost say pictorial ; I have 
accordingly called it describing the doom of Nineveh, 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

viewing it beforehand in vision as if it were before his eyes. 
He handles his subject with the assured touch of a master. 
The various stages of siege and defense, of the turmoil 
of battle, and of the horror and desolation succeeding, are 
portrayed with a vividness and vigor unmatched elsewhere 
in scripture. Two thirds of the book, the second and third 
chapters, are taken up with this description. The book is 
tense and austere ; we have quoted from the first chapter 
nearly all that relieves the general severity of style with 
words of comfort or amenity. In the traces of acrostic 
structure in the original of the first ten verses, there are 
signs that this portion of the prophecy was meant for a 
kind of introductory hymn or ode : a purpose not unfitting 
to its elevated sentiment and style, and to the important 
portrayal of which it is the prelude. 

Note. The fall of Nineveh, which Nahum's vision foresees by a 
few years, and the consequent transfer of world-empire from Assyria 
to Chaldea and Babylon, occurred in 607 b. c. Ten years later (597) 
came the surrender of King Jehoiachin to Nebuchadnezzar, which 
event virtually began the Chaldean captivity and exile ; and eleven 
years thereafter (586) the capture of Jerusalem and destruction of the 
temple completed the downfall of the Jewish state. Thus the events of 
the day of Jehovah once begun came crowding close upon each other ; 
and the prophets who had a genuine message from Jehovah were 
engaged, so to say, in gathering such predictive and interpretative 
elements as would, in the confusion of events, make Jehovah's will 
and purpose clear. 

At a time whose date cannot be definitely determined, 
but in which he could say, '' The day of Jehovah is near 
nhHh' upon all the nations" (Obad. 15), the prophet 
Pronouncing Obadiah, in the shortest book of the Old Testa- 
the Doom ment, directs a whole " vision " against Edom, 

01 Edom 

the neighbor nation of Israel, nucleating his 
oracle in the curt prediction : '' As thou hast done, it shall 
be done unto thee ; thy dealing shall return upon thine 
own head." The contemplation of what Edom had done, 

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AFTER THE REPRIEVE 

and of the attitude which that proud nation had always 
maintained toward Israel, roused bitter indignation in all 
the prophets. From the earliest of them, years before the 
downfall of the northern kingdom, to the latest, years after 
the deportation of Judah, the charge against Edom was 
uniformly the same. We may regard Obadiah, part of 
whose prophecy is paralleled by Jeremiah (cf. vss. i-6 with 
Jer. xlix, 14-16, 9, 10), as a kind of attorney for the 
whole prophetic case. Like his colleagues he motives the 
impending wrath upon Edom as '' for the violence done 
to thy brother Jacob " (10). In other words, his vision 
concentrates the thrust of the general prophetic mind not 
against any specific outrage nor indeed against Edom alone 
but against that perversion of natural affection which mani- 
fests itself in the ruthless, the inhumane, the unbrotherly, — 
a disposition of which throughout their common history 
Edom had been the conspicuous type. 

Note. The Prophets against Edom. The following list of proph- 
ecies against Edom are arranged as far as possible chronologically ; 
the place of Obadiah, however, being uncertain: (i) Joel iii, 19; 
(2) Amos i, II, 12; (3) Isa..xxxiv, 5-7 ;. (4) Obadiah; (5) Jer. xlix, 
7-22; (6) Lam. iv, 21, 22 (ironical); (7) Psa. cxxxvii, 7; (8) Ezek. 
XXV, 12-14; (9) Ezek. XXXV (Mount Seir-Edom); (10) Isa. Ixiii, 1-6; 
(11) Mai. i, 2-5. 

The prophecies in Isaiah (First and Second) answer more vividly to 
the vision character than do the others, and seem to be correlative to 
each other. In the First (Isa. xxxiv, 5-15) Jehovah describes the "sacri- 
fice " that he has in Bozrah (a chief city of Edom), and the desolation 
that will ensue; in the Second (Isa. Ixiii, 1-6), after the sacrifice is 
supposedly over, He is beheld coming up from Edom, '' with dyed 
garments from Bozrah," — one of the sublimest descriptions in all 
prophetic literature. 

Though Obadiah, as has been suggested, is the spokes- 
man of the Edom case, he is by no means a mere echo 
or summarizer of the other prophets. In the counsel he 
gives to Edom (vss. 10- 14). he analyzes in a masterly way 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

what it is to be unbrotherly — standing aloof, rejoicing in a 
brother's disaster, plundering a brother's substance, cutting 
off a brother's escape. Such are spiritual qualities utterly 
in contrast to what should be expected in descendants of a 
twin ancestor; and the ''shame that shall cover" them (lo) 
will be due to the fact that they will succumb to a superior 
and surviving spiritual force in the people that now they 
wrong (1 8). Nor is this all, though it is the root of the 
matter. Edom, among the Semitic nations, was distin- 
guished for wisdom. The inhabitants of Teman, its main 
city and district, were renowned for it (cf. Jer. xlix, 7) ; 
'Eliphaz, represented as the wisest and most venerable of 
Job's friends, was ''Eliphaz the Temanite." Well, Obadiah 
says the wisdom of Edom is destined to fail (8). The 
secret alliances and diplomacies by which that nation has 
maintained its ascendancy shall be uncovered and turned 
against it (5-9). So shall Edom, now so self-confident, 
become "small among the nations" (2; cf. Jer. xlix, 15), 
its worldly wisdom futile and discredited. 

All this prophecy of doom, however, is made in no vin- 
dictive or revengeful spirit ; it is a vision, not a decree. 
Like the other prophets, too, Obadiah is constructive ; he 
does not fail to end his message with a compensating note 
of redemption and hope. "And saviours," he concludes, 
"shall come up on mount Zion to judge the mount of 
Esau; and the kingdom shall be Jehovah's" (21). Thus 
his prophecy, true to its strain of literature, opens out 
to wider horizons, and to an eventual blessing, even upon 
the most inveterate adversary of Israel, beyond the self- 
induced doom. 

" I will stand upon my watch, and set me upon the 
tower, and will look forth to see what he will speak with 
me, and what I shall answer concerning my complaint. 
And Jehovah answered me, and said, 'Write the vision, 
and make it plain upon tablets, that he may run that 

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AFTER THE REPRIEVE 

readeth it. For the vision is yet for the appointed time, 

and it hasteth toward the end, and shall not lie : though 

„■ ,^ , it tarry, wait for it; because it will surely come, 
Habakkuk: . , ,, .. -^ 

Bewildered it Will not delay (Hab. 11, 1-3). Such was 

yet Faith- • ^^g resolve of the prophet Habakkuk, and its 

fully Waiting . 111 

reassuring answer, when, about the year 600 B.C., 
he contemplated the dim and troublous times just preced- 
ing the break-up of the Jewish state. His prophecy is 
headed, '' The burden (or oracle) which Habakkuk the 
prophet did see" (i, i) ; hardly to be called vision as yet,^ 
like those of Nahum and Obadiah, being an object for 
the meaning of which he must wait, something which 
he saw but did not understand. His oracle, accordingly, 
unlike the typical prophetic word, begins with a passion 
of personal bewilderment and doubt (i, 2-4) ; which mood, 
however, answered dialoguewise ^ by Jehovah, gradually 
subsides to the calmer resolve quoted above (ii, i) and, 
consenting thus to wait and consider, comes out to that 
utterance of living faith (ii, 4) which is the grand keynote 
of the book.^ From this point onward doubt disappears. It 
is as if the vision emerged from dimness to clarity before 
the prophet's eyes, and were the product alike of human 
intuition and divine disclosure. 

The prophet had reason for his doubt. It was the day 
of power and ascendancy for the man " whose might is 
his god" (i, 11; cf. 16). Assuming that Habakkuk's 
prophecy dates from 600 B.C., we may note that Nineveh, 
hitherto the center of world-empire, had fallen in 607 b.c, 
leaving Chaldea independent and aggressive, and that in 

1 For the relation of burden and vision see above, p. 191, note i. 

^ Professor Moulton, in the " Modern Reader's Bible," shows lucidly 
the dialogue character of the book, as also its lyric elements. 

3 This conclusion of Habakkuk's, " The righteous shall live by his 
faith" (or n>ore accurately, "in his faithfulness"), has had untold in- 
fluence in shaping the religious ideas of mankind; see the use of it in 
the New Testament, Rom. i, 17; Gal. iii, it; Heb. x, 38. 

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605 B.C. Egypt, hitherto the formidable rival of Assyria 
and Chaldea, had been defeated at Carchemish on the upper 
Euphrates by Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon. *' This vic- 
tory of Nebuchadnezzar," says Professor Driver,^ "was the 
turning point in the history of the age. It meant that 
the Chaldeans were destined to acquire supremacy over the 
whole of Western Asia." Of this the prophet is doubtless 
aware ; he can assent to the word of Jehovah, too, that the 
Chaldeans, ''that bitter and hasty nation" (i, 6), are or- 
dained for judgment and correction (i, 12). But what 
puzzles him is that Jehovah should countenance at all, 
much less use for his holy purpose, such an instrumen- 
tality against his own people, — should hold his peace 
" when the wicked swalloweth up the man that is more 
righteous than he" (i, 13), and then stupidly worships the 
net and the drag by which he has taken the nations and 
their wealth (i, 16), It is the same baffling question of 
the relation of might to right of which we have seen an 
amazing recrudescence in our own time. And the prophet, 
waiting for the vision that shall not lie, is guided to two 
answers, which we may call the divine disclosure and the 
human discovery : first, that this strange choice of instru- 
mentality belongs to the incredible work in which Jehovah 
is engaged (i, 5 ; cf. Isa. xxviii, 21), a work in which the 
destiny of all nations is involved ; and secondly, that this 
ravaging nation is really insane, — it is drunk with the lust 
of world conquest and stupid with materialism. " Behold, 
his soul is puffed up, it is not straight ^ in him"; and so 
the . prophet can set over this condition a might which is 
surely higher in the spiritual scale and therefore destined to 
survive : " but the righteous shall live by his faith " (ii, 4). 
Such was the intrepid spirit with which prophecy had learned 
to wait for the impending day of Jehovah. 

^ The New Century Bible, Minor Prophets, Vol. II, p. 52. 
2 So read, with the margin, instead of " upright." 

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AFTER THE REPRIEVE 

Having employed thus far the prophetic idiom, the 
word of Jehovah, the prophet now has recourse to the 
mashal or parable idiom, the language of human wisdom, 
to hurl back upon the encroaching Chaldeans their atroci- 
ties of character. '' Shall not all these (namely, the ravaged 
and plundered nations) take up a mashal against him, and 
a satire, riddles, against him " (ii, 6) ? There follows a 
series of five woes, inveighing against the various phases 
of Chaldean aggression, each woe couched in a lyrical 
couplet followed by a passage of detail (ii, 6 ; 9 ; 12; 15; 
19), and ending with what I have called the stupidity of 
materialism, — which is the modern idolatry. Thus the 
prophet scores not only the Chaldean ambition but the 
Chaldean culture. 

Finally, in the third chapter, . the prophet who has 
spoken in the language of oracle and of wisdom becomes a 
psalmist, and ends his book with a prayer, set like Psa. vii 
to Shigionoth (a musical term whose meaning is only 
conjectural) and dedicated like many of the Psalms to the 
music-master of the orchestra. The prayer is expressed in 
the old-fashioned form of the theophany (cf . Deut. xxxiii, 2 ; 
Judg. V, 4, 5), in which Jehovah's wrath against the nations 
and his activity for the salvation of his anointed (iii, 12, 13) 
is portrayed in terms of violent natural phenomena. In the 
realization of this divine care, though in trembling, — 

Because I must wait quietly for the day of trouble, 

For the coming up of the people that invadeth us (iii, 16), 

yet it is not as if he were dreading a dies irae ; the abid- 
ing mood in which his song culminates is hope and joy, 
the life of his faithfulness : 

Yet I will rejoice in Jehovah, 

I will joy in the God of my salvation ; 

Jehovah, the Lord, is my strength ; 

And he maketh my feet like hinds' feet, 

And will make me to walk upon my high places (iii, 18, 19). 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

II 

The Book Found in the Temple. Our consideration of the 
prophetic strain of Hterature has brought us within the 
shadow of the coming exile, leaving only Jeremiah to be 
considered before that event puts the period to what we 
have chosen to call the formative centuries of the literature. 
Before we take up his prophetic work, however, let us return 
to what was spoken of in a previous section, ^ namely, the 
consideration of ''a new and epoch-ma]<:ing strain of litera- 
ture " to be added to the forms already in their ripened 
development. This takes us back from Habakkuk's time to 
a date twenty-five years before the Chaldean invasion, the 
eighteenth year of the good King Josiah's reign ; a date 
noted with care by the Scripture historians, doubtless from 
their sense of its significance in the cultural and spiritual 
history of Israel. 

The event that made this year noteworthy was, to begin 
with, an event mainly literary : the finding and reading of 
The Di - ^ book. The story of the discovery and its effect 
coveryand is told, with some variations of incident and 
its Seque detail, in 2 Kings xxii, xxiii', and 2 Chronicles 
xxxiv, xxxv. As workmen were engaged in repairing the 
Temple, which during previous reigns had suffered profa- 
nations and indignities (cf. 2 Kings xxi, 4-8), the priest 
Hilkiah found a book that had so long remained hidden 
or neglected that none could trace its origin ; which book 
he identified as '' the book of the law." He showed it to 
Shaphan the scribe, who in turn brought it to the king. 
On reading in it enough to get its purport and be greatly 
troubled thereby, he had the book submitted to Huldah the 
prophetess, who confirmed its words of warning and censure, 
thus giving it, as it were, the prophetic imprimatur, and 
added a reassuring prediction personal to the king himself. 

^ See above, p. 204. 

[ 220 ] ■ • 



AFTER THE REPRIEVE 

The king thereupon called an assembly in the Temple, 
''the priests, and the prophets, and all the people, both 
small and great," and read to them "the words of the 
book of the covenant which was found in the house of 
Jehovah" (2 Kings xxiii, 2). The immediate sequel of the 
reading was a solemn ratification of the requirements of the 
book, confirmed by a personal covenant with Jehovah on 
the part of the king. "And," it is added, "all the people 
stood to the covenant." It is the first recorded instance 
under the kingdom of a general popular response to a 
literary or prophetic message. Then followed a strenuous 
and unsparing crusade against the idolatrous high places of 
which the land was full, the heathen rites and customs that 
had accumulated since Aha^, and the occult sorceries and 
superstitions which everywhere had so alloyed the 'people's 
faith. This done, a Passover season was observed in the 
central sanctuary, Jerusalem, — a festival season such as had 
not been known since the time of the Judges. 

Such, in its external manifestations, was the momentous 
reform under King Josiah, a revolution which had been 
silently gathering head among the sterling and intelligent 
common people since Isaiah and Hezekiah had labored to 
move a feeble " remnant," touched with a spiritual pulsation, 
into resolute loyalty and faith. ^ Hezekiah's reform, as we 
have seen, was only an initial step ; and a century of spirit- 
ual growth and discipline, not without persecution, must 
intervene before the nation could move to shake off the 
incubus of idolatry and heathen obscurantism. ^ But now the 
day of the new movement had dawned. The remnant was 
emerging from its obscurity and so leavening public opin- 
ion and sentiment that the king could reckon and rely on 
its reactive- support as his predecessor Hezekiah could not. 
And the instrumentality by which the reform was precipi- 
tated was the book found in the Temple. ^^^^" !^ 

1 See above, p. 172. ^ See above, p. 204. 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

From the nature of the response it elicited and of the 
reformation that ensued, it is clear that this unnamed book 
Id tfied discovered in 622 B.C. was substantially, if not in 
the Book of final form, the Book of Deuteronomy ; and that 
Deuteronomy -^ derived its tremendous influence and authority 
from the implicit belief that it was the original '' book of the 
law " (2 Kings xxii, 8), the essential covenant (xxiii, 2) and 
constitution of the Israelite faith. No doubt seems to have 
arisen regarding its authenticity, although nearly seven cen- 
turies had elapsed since it was supposedly written. It pur- 
ported to contain the actual words of the nation's traditional 
founder and lawgiver Moses, and beyond these by only one 
remove the awesome words of Jehovah whose being had 
become so remote. As such utterance it brought Jehovah's 
mind arid purpose near as even the wprds of the prophets 
had not availed to do. It was doubtless the vigorous sen- 
tences of warning and curse found near the end of the 
book (xxvii, 15-26; xxviii) which had the first and sharpest 
effect in causing the king's dismay (2 Kings xxii, 11) and 
waking to life the torpid conscience of the people. But the 
permanent and steadying effect, beyond that of any other 
Old Testament book, was due to something far deeper, on 
which oldness or newness had no determining power. In 
other words, the book was intuitively recognized as not 
merely the law of Moses but the law of sane and whole- 
some living for a people whose God is Jehovah ; and as 
such it was self-evidencing. 

Note. The Name^^ Deuteronomy .''^ The book owes its name — which 
we do not get from its author — to the mistranslation of a word in 
xvii, 1 8, when the book was translated from Hebrew into Greek. The 
king, as it there says, " shall write him a copy (mzshneh) of this law in 
a book." For this phrase the Septuagint version has to deuteronomion 
touto, " this second law," or " repeated law." The name, however, is 
a happy accident. " Although based upon a grammatical error," says 
Professor Driver, " the name is not an inappropriate one ; for Deuter- 
onomy (see xxix, i) does embody the terms of a second legislative 

[222] 



AFTER THE REPRIEVE 

* covenant,' and includes (by the side of much fresh matter) a repetition 
of a large part of the laws contained in what is sometimes called the 

* First Legislation ' of Exodus (Exod. xx, 22-xxiii, 33)." ^ 

Modern criticism has not treated the book as did the 
people of King Josiah's time. A disturbing problem, in- 
deed, has arisen regarding the real authorship of our Book 
of Deuteronomy and the time of its composition, — a prob- 
lem which to some scholars has seemed to involve the good 
faith of the book. Is it the actual work of Moses, which 
lay for incredible centuries undiscovered, or is it a pious 
fraud, the work of a much later author, who cunningly hid 
it where it was found, in order that in due time it might 
come to light ? The gravity of the problem has, I think, 
been overrated. We cannot, indeed, ascribe the book as it 
stands either to the pen or to the time of Moses ; but 
neither can we deny to him its essential substance and 
spirit. How this is we can see by considering how it an- 
swers to the ancient matter with which it deals and to the 
more developed civilization and culture which the discovery 
of it encountered. 

As measured by the marvelous effect it produced, the 
Book of Deuteronomy is a notable example of the trans- 
How the Book muting power and charm of literature. Its basal 
Minrof *^^ material, as old as Moses and the wilderness 
Moses days, had lain inert in the professional keeping 

of priests and magistrates, or in the musty archives of the 
Temple. We can see what the earlier form and phraseology 
of law was in such chapters as Exodus xxi-xxiii. It was 
austere, remote, impersonal ; it was treated, too, according 
to the primitive conception of written matter, as a thing to 
be stored and kept rather than as a thing to be made in- 
teresting and promulgated. 2 In this Book of Deuteronomy, 
however, one feels at once the charm of a transmuting spirit. 

1 Driver, "A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on Deuteronomy," p. i. 

2 See remarks on this distinttion, pp. 14, 15, above. 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

Here is a work to. which has been imparted the magical 
touch of Hterature. The hoary material assumes new form 
and Ufe ; it is law, indeed, but law popularized by being put 
in the language of personal love and personal counsel. It is 
a lawgiver's precepts given not as arbitrary commands but 
as principles vitalized by sane motive, reasonableness, gra- 
ciousness, humanity, and as molded to the terms of spiritual 
cause and effect. The aged Moses is represented as gather- 
ing his people together, just upon the eve of their entrance 
into their promised land, a land which he is forbidden to 
enter with them, and giving them in several discourses his 
last words, in which he rehearses the principles that for 
forty years he has labored to teach them. It is in itself an 
impressive setting. All the elements of situation, character, 
and the primitive wilderness coloring are preserved with 
wonderful literary skill. Whoever gave the book its later 
form had by an intimate . historic imagination so lived him- 
self into ancient conditions that in reading him one is trans- 
ported to the wilderness times with no sense of anachronism 
or discrepancy. It is not because the book obtrudes a false 
or doubtful claim that its time and authorship are ques- 
tioned. The book, we may confidently say, is genuinely 
and authentically Mosaic. Its warp is of Moses, both in sub- 
stance and in pervading spirit. But with this is interwoven, 
by the magic of literary skill, a woof of benignant grace 
and poise whose legitimate appeal is to a more developed 
social and political state than we can attribute to the crude 
conditions of its assumed origin. All this is due to the 
personal element graciously interfused. In hearing its words 
we listen not to a hard decree or statute but to the living 
voice of a man. By its persuasive charm the Hebrew law, 
from being a thing austere, arbitrary, remote, as ages of 
deposit in guilds and archives would make it, becomes a 
companionable element of common life, an accessible friend 
in counsel. In a word, it is law charged with personality. 

[224] 



AFTER THE REPRIEVE 

Beyond this personal element, however, there was an 
underlying strain in the Book of Deuteronomy which 
How the wrought to precipitate and crystallize spiritual 
tteTimeof convictions that had long been in solution in 
King josiah the deeper mind of Israel. Under their recreant 
kings — Ahaz, Manasseh, Amon — and under the inveterate 
tendency to ape foreign fashions, the leaders of sentiment 
had been groping or drifting in a maze of exotic cults 
and customs, until their sense of the godlike issues of 
life, or care for them, was sadly confused and blunted. 
Zephaniah felt their plight rightly, — they were ''settled 
on their lees," in a kind of negative limbo between good 
and evil (cf. Zeph. i, I2).i This timely book cleared the 
air. It brought men back from the fads and superficiali- 
ties of life to the simple sanity of first principles. It 
restored the inherent healthfulness of the native Hebrew 
mind. It renewed and enhanced the personal sense of 
relation with God, which was tending to lapse, and there- 
with the kindly sense of fellowship with neighbor man. 
An integrating influence, we may call it, to bring Jehovah's 
chosen people to a definition of terms. 

No detailed analysis is needed to show how intimately 
the book fitted the time of its discovery. The basal appeal 
of it is to Israel's self-respect and dignity as a nation 
chosen of Jehovah to a high mission. Yet that self-respect 
must needs be tempered and motived, — as Kipling would 
say, '' lest we forget." The people of Israel have indeed 
abundant reason to deem themselves unique among the 
peoples of the earth ; but it lies not in their superior 
numbers, for they were few (vii, 7), nor in their surpassing 



1 That a nation's mind may become rancid and torpid, and need the 
disturbing power of a new dynamic, even though this may be violent and 
revolutionary, is shown in a lucid way by Jeremiah (xlviii, ii, 12), who ex- 
plains, in the case of the people of Moab, what is meant by being " settled 
on their lees." 

[225] ^ 



GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

righteousness, for they were stiff-necked (ix, 5, 6). It lay 
in their pecuHarly intimate relation to the unseen, as a 
nation whom Jehovah loved and delivered, and to whom 
He gave in audible voice (v, 22) the law of the Ten Words 
(v, 6-21 ; cf. Exod. XX, 2-17), and through Moses a body 
of more specific enactments. '' Behold," the lawgiver says, 
'' I have taught you statutes and ordinances, even as 
Jehovah *my God commanded me, that ye should do so in 
the midst of the land whither ye go in to possess it. 
Keep therefore and do them : for this is your wisdom 
and your understanding in the sight of the peoples, that 
shall hear all these statutes, and say, ' Surely this great 
nation is a wise and understanding people.' For what 
great nation is there, that hath a god so nigh unto them, 
as Jehovah our God is whenever we call upon him ? And 
what great nation is there, that hath statutes and ordi- 
nances so righteous as all this law, which I set before 
you this day.? " (iv, 5-8). 

Such is the groundwork of appeal ; but it is not merely 
pride in their law, a law so long in abeyance, that the 
author of Deuteronomy has at heart. It goes back of this 
to the God who gave it, and to the personal and spiritual 
response which His dealings with them have earned. '' Hear, 
O Israel : Jehovah our God is one Jehovah ; and thou shalt 
love Jehovah thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy 
soul, and with all thy might" (vi, 4, 5). Such a sense of 
God opens the windows to a spiritual feeling and atmos- 
phere in which the crass idolatries and superstitions of the 
less developed races and nations cannot subsist. The con- 
ception of a Deity unseen and not to be likened to any 
created thing (iv, 15-24), yet who has revealed Himself by 
voice and by law, gives rise to the most peremptory mandates 
of the legislation. Accordingly, the command is to burn 
the images of other national gods (vii, 25, 26) ; to destroy 
the high places with all their trumpery of corrupt worship 

[226] 



AFTER THE REPRIEVE 

and conduct (xii, 2-4) ; and, as essential to the purity of 
the reUgion of Jehovah, to concentrate the pubhc worship, 
festival, and sacrifice at what in the Mosaic dialect is ''the 
place which Jehovah your God shall choose," but which in 
Josiah's time could only mean the Temple at Jerusalem 
(xii, 5-1 1). But this finer sense of Jehovah's being has a 
profound effect also on the sense of the proper approach 
to Him and the proper apprehension of His will and pur- 
pose. It makes the whole business of magic and sorcery 
and divination an aversion (xviii, 10-14), ^^^ removes 
prophecy from the realm of dreams and trance to the 
basis of sound sense such as Moses himself had (xviii, 
15-22; cf. xiii, 1-5). In short, the Book of Deuteronomy 
is a plea for the simple religion of love to a God who 
is near and personal (cf. x, 12, 13), and for a wholesome 
law of life which justifies itself in common sense (xxx, 
1 1- 1 4). We can think what a power such a message 
would have in a nation so long confused with foreign 
cults and customs, and how accurately timed it would be 
to their inner need, so like what Amos had foretold of 
the northern kingdom (cf. Amos viii, 11). And no better 
preparation and prophylactic could have been devised for 
the ordeal of transplantation and exile which was so soon 
to come upon the nation. It wrought to make the true 
Israel ready when the crisis came. So this Book of 
Deuteronomy may be truly regarded as one of the most 
potent and far-reaching books of all time. 

It is worthy of note that our Lord Jesus, in his day, made 
very appreciative use of it. From it he deduced the first 
great commandment (Mark xii, 29 ; cf. Deut. vi, 4) ;' and for 
all his answers to the temptations of the wilderness (Matt, iv^ 
i-ii) he drew from its store of precepts (vs. 4, cf. Deut. 
viii, 3; vs. 7, cf. Deut. vi, 16; vs. 10, cf. Deut. vi. 13), 
as if testifying thus to its sufficiency for the deepest spirit- 
ual needs. St. Paul also makes a free but just adaptation 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

of one of its eloquent passages (xxx, 12-14) to elucidate one 
of the most distinctive Christian concepts, " the righteous- 
ness which is of faith " (see Rom. x, 6-8). 

The book in its present finished form seems likeliest to 
have been a product of the age of Isaiah and Hezekiah, 
when, as we have seen, literary and prophetic activity alike 
awoke to inwardness and vigor. ^ When Isaiah had his 
school of disciples to perpetuate prophetic values (Isa. viii, 
16 ; xxx, 8), and Hezekiah his scholars to compile the 
treasures of Wisdom (Pro v. xxv, i), the venerable laws of 
Moses, so long stowed away in Temple archives, would 
not escape the attention of the men of letters who had the 
constitutional welfare of Israel at heart. On account of the 
religious confusion of the times succeeding Hezekiah 's reign, 
as it would seem, the publication of the book had to wait. 
There is no indication, however, that either the composition 
or the discovery was lacking in good faith ; and from the 
first its claim to be the veritable words of Moses was re- 
ceived as authentic. If a more modern element was recog- 
nized as interwoven in it, men would take this simply as 
due to the endeavor to " copy fair what time had blurred." 

Ill 

Jeremiah : the Man and the Crisis. In the thirteenth 
year of King Josiah's reign, five years before the Deuter- 
onomic code was brought to light, and when according to 
the Chronicler the religious purgation of Judah and Jeru- 
salem was well under way (2 Chron. xxxiv, 3), Jeremiah, 
a young man of priestly family dwelling in Anathoth near 
Jerusalem, received from Jehovah his call to be a prophet 
to Israel. The call seems to have been merely auditory 
(i, 4-10), and not accompanied, as were Isaiah's and Eze- 
kiel's (cf. Isa. vi, 1-13 ; Ezek. i, 4-ii, 7), by a visual ap- 
pearance. Nor was he, like them, a man of spacious and 

1 See Westphal and Du Pontet, " The Law and the Prophets," p. 297. 

[228] 



AFTER THE REPRIEVE 

imaginative vision ; he was too near the era of fulfillment for 
that (of. his contemporary Ezekiel, Ezek. xii, 21-23). There 
was nothing apocalyptic or recondite in his word ; it was a 
message to the ear. He dealt with the immediate issues 
and emergencies of his troubled time, things for which 
not pictured vaticination but conservative and old-fashioned 
principles were the proper solvent (cf. vi, 16 ; xxxi, 21). 
A contemporary of Zephaniah, Nahum, and Habakkuk, he 
felt as did they, but far more intimately, the imminence of 
the '' day of Jehovah " (xxx, 7), the day momentous for Israel 
and the world. To him it was given, indeed, through a 
career of something over forty-two years, first to prepare 
his people for it before it threatened, and then to live 
and labor with them after the doom fell, through the two 
deportations of 597 and 586 B.C., dying at last (tradition 
says by martyrdom) in Egypt, whither he had been carried 
against his will and counsel. 

In reading the Book of Jeremiah we do not get the 
peculiar impression of a speaker reenforced. by a man of 
The Book and letters, as in Deuteronomy, nor the literary savor 
its Author Qf ^ cultured and creative statesman, as in Isaiah. 
We feel rather the vehemence of the. preacher and censor 
of morals, as he comes to close grips with the people, men 
of the Temple courts and city gates and public places. The 
impending catastrophe of national overthrow, for which his 
whole prophetic activity must be a deep-laid preparation, 
was too near and pressing to favor leisurely care for author- 
ship. Accordingly, as a literary production the Book of 
Jeremiah is somewhat formless — rather an accumulation 
of utterances hot from their immediate occasion, or of bio- 
graphical incidents preserved by a secretary, than a planned 
and consecutive structure. This trait was natural enough, 
perhaps, from the way in which the book was composed. 
Its substance consists of public utterances or rhapsodies 
which the prophet had delivered at various times and carried 

[229] 



GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

in mind from the beginning of his career, and then, in the 
fourth year of King Jehoiakim, dictated to Baruch, in the 
hope that with such repetition in written form they would 
have a better chance to effect their purpose (xxxvi, 1-4 ; 
cf. vss. 17, 18). The first copy, however, on being read to 
the king, was burned leaf by leaf by the king himself ; who 
thereby incurred a severe personal oracle for his impiety 
(xxxvi, 20-31). ''Then took Jeremiah another roll, and 
gave it to Baruch the scribe, the son of Neriah, who wrote 
therein from the mouth of Jeremiah all the words of the 
book which Jehoiakim king of Judah had burned in the 
fire ; and there were added besides unto them many like 
words" (xxxvi, 32). It seems clear that the book did not 
lose in vigor by rewriting. 

The style of the book,, more especially of the parts 
containing the prophet's earlier rhapsodies, is tense and 
impassioned, well-nigh to excess ; nor is it wanting in the 
cogency of lucid figure and telling phrase, a quality which 
sends his words straight to their aim, evincing not only the 
fervid preacher but the born master of diction. Many of 
the most cherished and vital passages of Scripture are his. 
At the same time, as one reads the book at length, one 
becomes aware of a certain lengthy and profuse tendency, 
a fault perhaps, as we see in modern times, of a dictated 
style. Discount has to be made also for the too unrelieved 
monotony of denunciation and lament, the like of which has 
imported into our modern vocabulary the word "jeremiad." 
For the rest, the parts of the book relating to affairs after 
Jehoiakim's fourth year are largely the work of Baruch the 
scribe, and are to great proportion in narrative prose. 

It is: not merely by his literary power, however, but far 
more by his personality, that Jeremiah has left his indelible 
impress on the heart of the ages. His was a personality 
compounded to a quite wonderful degree of tenderness and 
strength, and revealed through a lifelong experience truly 

[230] 



AFTER THE REPRIEVE 

tragic. Of a sensitive, self-effacing nature, which shrank 
from anything harsh or arbitrary, and which longed for 
sympathy and friendship (cf. xv, lo, 17, 18), yet a deeper 
impulsion within him (cf. xx, 9) caused him to be Jehovah's 
fitly chosen instrument urging a message which, whether 
in reprimand or in wise counsel, earned him only bitter 
strife and opposition. " For behold," was Jehovah's com- 
missioning word to him, '' I have made thee this day a 
fortified city, and an iron pillar, and brazen walls, against 
the whole land, against the kings of Judah, against the 
princes thereof, against the priests thereof, and against 
the people of the land" (i, 18; cf. vi, 27; xv, 20). This 
finely touched, intense nature of Jeremiah's, so full of the 
spirit of truth, was of untold significance just at this crucial 
period in Israel's spiritual history. It was the dynamic of 
the personal element in the prophetic word, the element of 
human appeal to the heart of man, making Jehovah's word 
no more a speculation or a doubtful drsam but a fire and 
a hammer (cf. xxiii, 28-30). For this dynamic the time 
and the nation were ready. Jeremiah was dealing, it will 
be remembered, with a people whose leading classes were 
described by his contemporary Zephaniah as "settled on 
their lees" (Zeph. i, 12), living and thinking as if Jehovah 
were the same kind of moral nonentity as their idols ^ — 
or as Jeremiah himself puts it, '' have walked after vanity, 
and are become vain " (ii, 5 ; cf. Psa. cxv, 8). To sting 
the nation to life from such spiritual apathy and decadence 
nothing could avail like the personal touch. It was this ele- 
ment that Jeremiah, less the prophet than the man, whose 
sternness though inexorable was administered in sorrow 
and love, was divinely chosen in this critical time to supply. 
It is a link in the unitary chain of creative prophecy. 
Visions of saving personality have already been vouchsafed 
to Isaiah (ix, 6, 7 ; xi, 1-5 ; xxxii, 1-8) ; they constitute 

^ See above, p. 210. 
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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

what we call his Messianic strain. Here seems to be a first 
stage in making the vision a concrete reality. It appears 
in the person of one who must strive and contend (xv, lo), 
and who is long unreconciled to his hard lot (xv, 16-19). 
It is the reverse side, so to . say, of the grand prophetic 
design. Before the Chaldean exile, now so near, is over, 
we shall see a higher stage of fulfillment, in the personality 
of one who "will not cry, nor lift up his voice," and yet 
whose work will be potent in the long run to " set justice 
in the earth " (Isa. xlii, 1-4). In a very significant sense 
we may regard Jeremiah's career as an adumbration of 
and a counterpart to that of the mysterious " Servant of 
Jehovah," whose personality and work are portrayed in the 
Second Isaiah.^ 

The full meaning of Jeremiah's prophetic call perhaps 
did not come to him all at once, nor while he was in the 
What he was aggressive period of young manhood. It sounds 
Called to Do \[]^q tha fruit of age and reflection. We will 
remember that the first draft of his prophecy was burned 
(xxxvi, 23) ;.we note further that this event occurred at the 
point in his career when his prophecy took on a more hope- 
ful and constructive tone. The title of his book, too, names 
two periods of prophetic revelation, one beginning in Josiah's 
reign and the other in that of Jehoiakim (i, 1-3), — periods 
quite definitely distinguished (cf. xxv, 3-9). We can well 
surmise, therefore, that a sense of the tremendous depth 
and scope of the work he was called to do first became 
clear to him in his later and more reflective years, when 
he began to feel how inevitable was the overthrow of the 
Jewish state. His call, as he then reports it, puts into 
rather more definite terms "a work of Jehovah's of which 
both Isaiah in his day (Isa. xxviii, 20, 21) and Habakkuk 
in this (Hab. i, 5) have had an apocalyptic glimpse. They 
had seen it, however, as spectators and dreamers ; here it 

1 See the section relating to the Second Isaiah in the next chapter. 

[232] 



AFTER THE REPRIEVE 

seems put as a practical duty on a man's shoulders. " See," 
is Jehovah's commission to him, '' I have this day set thee 
over the nations and over the kingdoms, to pluck up and 
to break down and to destroy and to overthrow, to build and 
to plant" (i, lo). An amazing work this, which only Jeho- 
vah's word, through this human spokesman, can avail to do. 
There seems to have been given to Jeremiah such a sense 
of the whole vast orbit of Jehovah's purpose that he is able 
to realize in some degree how much his work means in that 
little arc of it comprised in the character and world mission 
of Israel. It is this living sense of things that gives him 
courage and steadfastness for his appointed task. 

In this commission, as will be noted, a series of strong 
metaphors resolve themselves into two contrasted factors, 
or tendencies, of the prophet's influence : a destructive and 
a constructive. We have already noted the somewhat form- 
less character of his book considered ^s a whole. Only con- 
fusion is apt to result, in fact, from trying to conform it to 
a planned literary scheme. The spirit of the book, however, 
requires no such extraneous aid. The prophet's commission, 
as just quoted, is its sufficient key of structure. In applying 
this, however, we must needs bear in mind that the two 
factors destructive and constructive are not sharply distin- 
guished in detail but mingled in varying proportions ; and 
that they are expressed, and must be apprehended, in the 
intense language of spiritual realization. Jeremiah's power 
through Jehovah's word, " to pluck up and to break down 
and to destroy and to overthrow, to build and to plant," 
is exerted not in the councils of state but in the secret 
depths of human nature, the spiritual workshops of being. 
Hence his strong personal stress and feeling. 

Let us consider in brief analysis these two factors. 

The period of Jeremiah's career which he deems destruc- 
tive, and during which denunciation and lament predomi- 
nate, corresponds roughly to the period of his prophetic 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

work under King Josiah and up to the fourth year of King 
Jehoiakim. The prophet himself reviews this period in the 
The Destruc- twenty-fifth chapter (xxv, 3-6) ; and in both this 
tive Factor ^^(j ^^g eighteenth chapter defines the object of 
its destructive trend. '' At what instant," is Jehovah's word, 
" I shall speak concerning a nation, and concerning a king- 
dom, to pluck up and to break down and to destroy it ; 
if that nation, concerning which I have spoken, turn from 
their evil, I will repent of the evil that I thought to do 
unto them" (xviii, 7, 8 ; cf. xxv, 5).' The object, after all, is 
not vindictive but remedial. It is not the nation's existence 
that he would destroy but the inveterate evils that like ex- 
crescences have fastened themselves upon it. '' Go ye up 
upon her walls," he says, ''and destroy; but make not a 
full end : take away her branches ; for they are not Jeho- 
vah's " (v, 10). An element not of Jehovah has fastened 
itself on the people's* character, sapping its integrity and 
exposing it to the danger of disintegration ; and this para- 
sitical growth must be thoroughly unearthed and uprooted. 
Sucli is the prophet's aim in his work during Josiah's reign, 
an aim which does not interfere with but rather deepens 
the reforms already in the air. But he has at heart an 
inner and intimate object which, from lack of a generally 
diffused spiritual sense, he can enforce only by appeal to 
the danger of military invasion and ruin (cf. i, 14-16 ; iv, 6 ; 
X, 22). Until the people can realize that their real peril is 
from within, they must be addressed in the objective terms 
that they can feel and understand. 

When, however, we inquire more specifically what there 
is of destructive tendency in his words, we find that he is 
concerned essentially to break down and uproot every influ- 
ence that has wrought to mar his people's personal relation 
to Jehovah, and by consequence their national integrity. It 
all centers in their deep-seated idolatrous tendency, which 
has become a deadly blight on their character. 

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AFTER THE REPRIEVE 

I. He introduces the effects of idolatry by reverting to 
the same fundamental figure that Hosea had employed of 
the kingdom of Israel a century before ; he is indeed of 
similar temperament to Hosea, and stands in an analogous 
relation to the kingdom of Judah, Jehovah, he assumes as 
did Hosea, is a tender and faithful husband to his people ; 
but they, undeterred by th^ sad example of Israel, have even 
more treacherously forsaken Him and turned to illicit loves 
and pleasures, or, as Jeremiah bluntly puts it, have '' com- 
mitted adultery with stones and with stocks "" (iii, 9). In 
the same reckless disposition they have run about after the 
customs and culture of the big nations who seem to have 
set the pace of worldly success (ii, 18, 36; cf. v, 7, 8). This 
shallow infatuation has made them beyond others fickle and 
disloyal (ii, 10, 11). Worse than that, it has lowered them 
to a mental and spiritual standard unworthy of their native 
intelligence and national tradition. They have nothing to- 
learn from foreign gods and cults ; on the contrary, devo- 
tion to these is a degeneration. To Jeremiah the whole 
idolatrous business is a thing so contemptible, so vacuous, 
that men ought to be ashamed of it as if it were a secret 
crime (ii, 26, 27) ; and as for any intellectual value in it, 
he exclaims, '' The instruction of idols ! it is but a stock " 
(x, 8). In this feeling he shares with his contemporary 
Habakkuk, who, noting the idols of wood and stone that 
call forth the worship of the approaching Chaldeans, ex- 
claims with disgust, '' Shall this teach " (Hab. ii, 19) ? The 
prophets are realizing not only the religious but the intel- 
lectual emptiness of the heathenism with ^hose allurements 
their nation has so long been obsessed ; and if they set 
up a destructive campaign against the evil, it is to counter- 
act a greater evil that threatens, ''even the fruit of their 
thoughts" (vi, 19). By dallying with the seductions of idol- 
atry the people are but courting their own deterioration. 
'' Do they provoke me to anger ? saith Jehovah ; do they 

[^35] 



GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

not provoke themselves, to the confusion of their own 
faces" (vii, 19)? ''For my people," is JehoVah's introduc- 
tory statement of the situation, " have committed two evils : 
they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and 
hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold 
no water " (ii, 13). 

2. Nor is it this exotic culture alone that Jeremiah is 
concerned to eradicate. His spiritual intuitions go deeper. 
There are other things, native to Israel's traditional faith, 
which, because they have become dead forms or hurtful 
'superstitions dissociated from personal righteousness, are 
doomed to go. 

For who would keep an ancient form 
Thro' which the spirit breathes no more.'* 

seems to have been a conviction to which his realization of 
•things led him. Hezekiah, in his day, had had the resolu- 
tion to break up the brazen serpent which had evidently 
become a fetish (2 Kings xviii, 4) ; it was a wholesome 
beginning of a constructive iconoclasm. Jeremiah, in the 
same sentiment, prophesies a time when the ark of the 
covenant, around which have centered some of the nation's 
most mystic ideas, will no more be brought to mind (iii, 16). 
But a more radical sweep than this follows. Seeing how, 
since city and Temple were miraculously spared in the time 
of Isaiah, the Temple has come to be regarded as a Pal- 
ladium of safety apart from the righteousness its worship 
represents, he boldly takes his stand in the gate of Jeho- 
vah's house and proclaims, ''Trust ye not in lying words, 
saying, ' The Temple of Jehovah, the Temple of Jehovah, 
the Temple of Jehovah, are these ' " (vii, 4), and goes on 
to stigmatize it as "a den of robbers " (vs. 11), — the same 
term which our Lord takes up and uses as a motive for 
his cleansing of the Temple (cf. Mark xi, 17). He prom- 
ises perpetuity of residence in that place if they will amend 

[236] 



AFTER THE REPRIEVE 

their ways and their doings ; but faihng this, their sacred 
Temple, its function outraged, is doomed to become hke 
Shiloh (vss. 12-15). He intimites further that their system 
of sacrifices is not of the original commandment but added 
later, to the hurt of that simple, forthright obedience which 
is the one thing pleasing to God (vss. 21-24). This first 
prophecy against the dishonored Temple seems to have had 
little attention (cf. vss. 27, 28) ; but later in his career, when 
as a kind of last resort he repeats this threat of the doom 
of Shiloh, his words are bitterly resented, and he is in 
danger of death, until some of the elders remind the in- 
dignant princes that a similar prophecy was uttered a cen- 
tury before by Micah (xxvi, 1-19 ; cf. Mic. iii, 12). From 
all this it may be seen that Jeremiah accounts nothing 
sacred that is not sincere ; as soon as falseness enters, or 
a cover for unrighteousness, its doom is deserved and sure. 
3. Another indictment that Jeremiah has against his time 
is still more sweeping. It is against the leaders in thought 
and morals in whose hands is the education of the people. 
There is much in their work to be purged and corrected, 
doubtless because it, like the fashionable sentiment of the 
day, has caught the blight of heathen and decadent ten- 
dency. When Jeremiah, by the figure of the potter and 
the clay, tells his people that Jehovah is minded out of the 
misshapen character of Israel to make a new and comely 
vessel, he is met by the skepticism of men stuck fast in 
conservatism. The nation's educational activities, it would 
seem, are well organized; "the law," they say, '' shall not 
perish from the priest, nor counsel from the wise, nor the 
word from the prophet" (xviii, 18). With all these lines 
of instruction in smooth and conventional running order, 
they need pay no attention to this outsider with his revolu- 
tionary notions ; such seems to have been the sentiment 
in which Jeremiah's menace of danger was received. But 
Jeremiah's indictment pierces beneath their conventionalized 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE ~ 

institutions. ''A wonderful and homble thing," he says, "is 
come to pass in the land : the prophets prophesy falsely, 
and the priests bear rule by their means ; and my people 
love to have it so : and what will ye do in the end thereof" 
(v, 30, 31)? He is severest, perhaps, upon the prophets, 
the meh who ought to be his colleagues as spokesmen of 
Jehovah ; they are men whose dreams are an echo of public 
opinion, whose personality is subdued to the corrupt stand- 
ards of the times, and whose vaticinations accordingly, like 
water, cannot rise higher than their own source (see xxiii, 
9-40). But the wise men also come in for their share of 
denunciation (viii, 8, 9 ; ix, 23, 24) ; ''the false pen of the 
scribes," he complains, '' hath wrought falsely," as if some- 
how they had perverted the truth of things. A class of 
men not hitherto mentioned in prophecy, also, are included 
in Jeremiah's comprehensive censure : the shepherds, — a 
general term for the princes and rulers, whose function is 
to fold and feed the flock of Jehovah, and who like the 
rest are false and rebellious (ii, 8, margin ; xxiii, 1-4 ; cf. 
Ezek. xxxiv). All this amounts to a sweeping indictment 
of the cultural institutions of Israel, as they have lapsed 
into decadence from the standard dictated by loyalty to 
Jehovah. "For my people," is Jehovah's summary, "are 
foolish, they know me not ; they are sottish children, and 
they have no understanding ; they are wise to do evil, but 
to do good they have no knowledge" (iv, 22). 

We have thus seen with what sad thoroughness Jeremiah 
took the destructive factor of his mission to heart, empha- 
sizing every demand of it almost as if it were final, and 
yet with each indictment infusing a gracious and saving 
element. The breaking down and the uprooting were done 
not in vengeance but in presageful love. It was like a wise 
clearing of the ground for a building and planting which 
should be as noble as the preparation was thorough. And 
let us pause here to note how timely all this severity was. 

[238] 



AFTER THE REPRIEVE 

For soon, while the prophet was still living and active, the 
long impending transplantation of the people would come, 
when, on new and unhallowed ground, the splendid glamours 
of idolatry in its home would be forced upon their sight, 
while all the ritual and traditional props by which they had 
buttressed up a heedless religion would be gone. Well for 
them that the crude ugliness of idolatrous culture and the 
futility of irfsincere forms had been so strenuously laid bare ; 
it was an essential prophylactic for the crisis to come. 

In the tone of Jeremiah's prophecies of the second period, 
under Jehoiakim and his successors, while there is no lack 
^jjg of sharp censure and severity, the constructive 

Constructive predominates. A new note of encouragement 
Factor ^^^ promise takes the place of the former voice 

of denunciation and lament. This transition is definitely 
announced in terms of the prophet's original commission. 
''And it shall come to pass," is Jehovah's word, ''that, like 
as I have watched over them to pluck up and to break 
down and to overthrow and to destroy and to afflict, so will 
I watch over them to build and to plant" (xxxi, 28). This 
intimates that the prophetic activity yet to come will be a 
contribution toward the constructive factor of Jehovah's pur- 
pose. So indeed it turns out ; but because the constructive 
design is founded on a principle new and strange to the 
thoughts of men, it must create its fit audience and follow- 
ing slowly, making its way through contempt and persecution 
to positive results which in the present are germinal and 
secret. Still, it is the pioneer work in a building and plant- 
ing for a limitless world and for eternity ; it will reveal 
itself as men are ready for it. 

• Mingled with the prophecies of this period are passages 
from the biography of Jeremiah written by his secretary 
Baruch ; which passages, written in narrative prose, serve in 
part to show the circumstances under which the prophecies 
were uttered, but are not very mindful either of chronological 

[ 239 ] 



GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

or topical order. But for the light they throw on the indig- 
nities and sufferings that his message elicited, and on his 
consistent steadfastness through them all, these biographical 
incidents are an invaluable contribution to his constructive 
work, making him not only a proclaimer but a living embodi- 
ment of it. As such he is the first of three great person- 
alities in whom the supreme meanings of Israel's prophetic 
era come to vital expression. It is with the prophecy itself, 
however, rather than with details of the biography, that we 
are at present concerned. 

I. To get at the inwardness of this constructive factor 
of Jeremiah's commission, we will go back a moment to the 
reign of Josiah, when he was engaged predominantly in the 
irksome work of breaking down and uprooting the inveterate 
evils of Judah. His work began, it will be remembered, 
when the nation, under its pious and blameless king, was 
engaged in a campaign of Temple repair and reform ; which 
work five years thereafter was made enthusiastic, not to 
say fanatical, by the discovery of the Book of the Law in 
the Temple, and the hearty response of king and people to 
it, as to the ancient covenant given by Moses.^ A notable 
reform this, one of the great landmarks of Israel's history ; 
it has seemed strange to many that Jeremiah takes so little 
notice of it. He does indeed counsel obedience to it, giving 
it his sincere '' Amen " (xi, i-8), but in a way which, as 
compared with his usual vehemence, seems rather lukewarm ; 
and in the conspiracy of opposition to it which he encoun- 
ters in his home town (cf. xi, 21) he seems to recognize an 
element of futility in the covenant itself. Good as far as 
it goes, it is not penetrative enough, not self-vitalizing ; it 
is a thing, after all, imposed from without. But the revived 
idea of the covenant sets him thinking ; and while he goes 
on with his destructive work the thought of a new covenant 
is germinating within him, a covenant which shall really be 

1 See above, p. 220 f. 
[ 240 ] , 



AFTER THE REPRIEVE 

a mutual accord between man and God. By the time he 
has reached the transition to the constructive factor this 
thought is so matured that it is made the basal principle of 
Israel's new life, and indeed strikes the highest note that 
the prophetic ideal has hitherto reached. " Behold, the days 
come, saith Jehovah, that I will make a new covenant with 
the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah : not ac- 
cording to the covenant that I made with their fathers in 
the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of 
the land of Egypt ; which my covenant they brake, although 
I was a husband unto them, saith Jehovah. But this is the 
covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after 
those days, saith Jehovah : I will put my law in their in- 
ward parts, and in their heart will I write it ; and I will be 
their God, and they shall be my people. And they shall 
teach no more every man his neighbor, and every man his 
brother, saying, ' Know Jehovah ' : for they shall all know 
me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith 
Jehovah : for I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin will 
I remember no more" (xxxi, 31-34). This ideal of self- 
subsistent personality in conscious fellowship with Jehovah 
is the concept that has underlain all his work of negation, 
making its severity truly remedial and constructive. 

2. As a broken and dishonored covenant connotes a 
decadent state, so a new covenant relation with Jehovah, 
wherein not the communal body but the individual soul is 
the vital unit, connotes a new commonwealth renewed after 
its inner principle. For this Jeremiah has provided funda- 
mentally in predicting the covenant itself. He prefaces the 
prediction by quoting a homely old proverb, which evidently 
expresses a very prevalent sentiment since both he and 
Ezekiel cite it, but which both say no more holds. "The 
fathers have eaten sour grapes," the proverb runs, "and 
the children's teeth are set on edge " (xxxi, 29 ; cf. Ezek. 
xviii, 2). No more, say both prophets, shall this shallow 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

pretext of heredity (attenuated perhaps from the second com- 
mandment, Exod. XX, 5 ; Deut. v, 9) be used to excuse sin 
or explain misfortune. Henceforth individual character, with 
its individual responsibility and freedom, is to be the unit 
of values personal and communal. This broaches a doctrine 
wholly new in race-ridden Israel. And it comes just in 
season to prepare for the critical time when it will be vitally 
needed. Soon they will be in exile and foreign subjection, 
without a king and without central organization ; each man 
must be self-directive, his own king as it were. Hence the 
new covenant, which embodies the spiritual virtue to build 
a new manhood and plant a new commonwealth. Jeremiah's 
idea of this regenerated state, which seems to dawn upon 
him as soon as he is fully convinced that the captivity is 
inevitable, comes as a kind of reaction, a resilient uprise 
of faith, as the saving virtues of the state are felt to be 
running low. After reviewing the line of kings from the 
good Josiah untimely slain, to Coniah (Jehoiachin) doomed 
to exile from his throne and land with no hope of a ruling 
successor (xxii, 10-30) and with a degenerate court (" shep- 
herds," xxiii, I, 2), he predicts as an offset to this, in the 
coming days, a well-cared-for people gathered from the scat- 
tered remnant of Jehovah's flock (xxiii, 3), and over them, 
raised unto David, "a righteous Branch," who ''shall reign 
as king, and deal wisely, and shall execute justice and right- 
eousness in the land" (xxiii, 5; cf. xxxiii, 15). Such is 
Jeremiah's contribution to the Messianic idea ; and the 
era associated with it will be so superior to the decadent 
past that its inauguration will be an epoch to date history 
by (xxiii, 7, 8). 

3. These ideas of building and planting are no mere 
poet's dream ; for Jeremiah is the least visionary of the 
prophets, having little use for dreams (cf. xxiii, 25-29) ; 
and it is his preeminent service to hi^ people to make his 
prophecies practical, putting them into the works, so to say, 

[242] 



AFTER THE REPRIEVE 

to be wrought into fulfillment. This is seen in his treat- 
ment of the first and most important deportation. As early 
as the fourth year of Jehoiakim (605 b.c), when Nebuchad- 
nezzar's victory over Pharaoh Necho at Carchemisli gave the 
world-empire to the Chaldeans, he predicted the captivity 
of Judah in definite terms, putting its duration at seventy 
years and promising a return at the end of that time (xxv, 
12 ; cf. xxix, 10). During that period all the nations, Jeru- 
salem and the Judean cities not exempted, must " drink of 
the wine of the wrath of Jehovah," and the mind of men 
would be in madness and confusion (xxv, 15-29). This 
momentous ordeal was evidently a thing to be met not 
with dismay but v/ith wisdom and enlightened faith. When, 
therefore, eight years after this prediction, the siege and 
surrender of Jerusalem occurred, Jeremiah, though at first 
bewildered by the banishment of King Jehoiachin (Coniah) 
and his household (xxii, 24-30), apparently took the event 
as a matter of course ; when indeed he saw that the surren- 
der comprised the sterling citizenry of the state (cf. 2 Kings 
xxiv, 14), he regarded it (see his vision of the figs, chap, xxiv) 
as a providential separation of the good elements from the 
bad, the sound and saving remnant from the herd of corrupt 
and decadent. To these "good figs," now domiciled in the 
land of the Chaldeans, he applies his favorite constructive 
metaphors : '' F'or I will set mine eyes upon them for good, 
and I will bring them again to this land ; and I will build 
them, and not pull them down ; and I will plant them, and 
not pluck them up " (xxiv, 6). It is with these that the 
hope and redemption of Israel lies. From this time onward 
his plans and cares are as truly with these exiles as with 
those who have remained at home ; and when a little later 
the too superficial prophets who have accompanied Jehoia- 
chin stir up the community in Chaldea with false hopes 
of a speedy return, he writes his famous letter to them, 
reminding them of their seventy years' appointed time, and 

[243] 



GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

advising them to make themselves homes and maintain 
family and communal life as if their stay were to be per- 
manent, ''and seek the peace of the city whither I have 
caused you to be carried away captive, and pray unto Jeho- 
vah for it ; for in the peace thereof shall ye have peace " 
(xxix). With a national transplantation that is so full of 
meaning for Israel's larger mission and destiny he cannot 
reconcile a short captivity, much as he would like to do so 
(cf. xxviii). The constructive factor of his work is concerned 
with a development of character which requires time and 
experience in the larger world of Jehovah's purpose, and 
this exile is his strange yet gracious means thereto. " For 
I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith Jeho- 
vah, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you hope 
in your latter end" (xxix, ii). Accordingly, the first cap- 
tivity, brought about by the peaceful surrender of King 
Jehoiachin and the best elements of the nation, is taken 
by the prophet as a matter of course, as a step in the 
development which Jehovah has in purpose for them. 

Equally was this calm confidence in the truth of his 
prophecy manifested on the eve of the final deportation, 
when he was in prison for predicting the disaster to king 
and city, and when, as it would seem, the beleaguering army 
was encamped even in his home town two miles away. 
He had prophesied eventual return ; return therefore was 
a matter of course, not of uncertainty. Accordingly, in the 
face of this seeming hopeless outlook, he bought an ances- 
tral field in Anathoth, and executed the deed with all care 
and legality, because — " thus saith Jehovah of hosts, the 
God of Israel : ' Llouses and fields and vineyards shall yet 
again be bought in this land'" (xxxii, 15; 42-44). 

The immediate effect of the first captivity on the proph- 
et's mind was to clear up the prophetic situation in Israel. 
This is shown in his homely vision of the two baskets of 
figs (xxiv) : '' the good figs, very good ; and the bad, very 

[244] 



AFTER THE REPRIEVE 

bad, that cannot be eaten, they are so bad." This vision he 
uses to discriminate between the people who have gone to 
Between Babylon, the element destined to peace and pros- 
the Two perity and eventual return, and the poorer sort who 
ap ivi es remain, the element destined to eventual dispersion 
and unrest and scorn. His sympathy and promise are with 
the former; with the latter he must remain in thankless 
labor until his own enforced exile and death. It is a labor 
hopeless of any triumphant outcome ; its prophetic substance, 
not new oracles but counsels and warnings for the immediate 
occasion ; and its literary vehicle, not impassioned rhapsody 
but mainly the biographical reports of his secretary Baruch. 
During the eleven years intervening between the two 
captivities (597 to 586 B.C.), accordingly, Jeremiah's chief 
concern with his people was to keep them from indulging 
false hopes of deliverance from the Chaldeans (cf., for ex- 
ample, xxxvii, 5-10), and to emphasize the unchangeable 
truth of the predictions he had already made. To every 
anxious inquiry on the part of king or leaders he returned 
the consistent answer : they must come under the hand of 
the king of Babylon, and their city must be destroyed 
(cf. xxxiv, 1-5 ; xxxviii, 14-23). And when the Chaldean 
army drew near to besiege the city, he counseled them to 
save their lives by surrender (xxi, 9 ; xxxviii, 2). For this 
he suffered a loathsome imprisonment on the charge of 
treason, and came nigh to death (xxxviii, 4-13). But just 
this counsel was in the consistent line of his common-sense 
view of life ; it came too at a time, already taught by one 
experience, when surrender would mean not desperation but 
faith and courage. It was, to be sure, a new lesson in a 
world all too inured to treacheries and atrocities between 
nations. But there is evidence that in the years succeeding 
it was an element in the redemption of Israel. In a sense 
we may regard it as the keynote of the strong religious 
spirit of the exile. It means much for nation or individual 

[ 245 ] 



GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

to prove by wise experience that ' ' the conquest of Fate 
comes not by rebeUious struggle, but by acquiescence." 
And to the better remnant of Israel it was given, in this 
Chaldean captivity, to exemplify this on a national scale, 
though the prophet's immediate counsel went unheeded. 

This later period of Jeremiah's life, however, was not 
without its larger work in literary prophecy. Through his 
amanuensis Baruch he composed a series of oracles, or 
burdens, on the surrounding nations (xlvi-li), beginning 
with Egypt, as the battle of Carchemish brought her under 
the dominion of Chaldea (xlvi), and ending with the doom 
of mighty Babylon herself (1, li), who, after the appointed 
seventy years were completed, must in her turn drink, like 
all the other nations, of the wine of Jehovah's. wrath (xxv, 
12-31), The oracles addressed to these nations — Philistia, 
Moab, Ammon, Edom, Damascus, Kedar, Elam — are mostly 
of unrelieved doom ; though there is an occasional promise 
that Jehovah '' will bring back the captivity " of some people 
(cf. xlviii, 47 ; xlix, 6, 39). His warrant for the prophecies 
on the nations outside of Israel is in the terms of his original 
commission, for he feels that Jehovah has set him ''over the 
nations, and over the kingdoms " (i, 10). It belongs also to 
his message of peace and redemption for Israel, so soon to 
be swallowed up in the maw of the Chaldean monster (cf. li, 
34) ; for the time of Chaldea also would come, and Israel, 
delivered, would have no occasion to fear, but rather to bless 
the discipline of her ordeal. One is inclined to call it not 
only the culmination of Jeremiah's untold service to his 
nation, but the high-water mark of prophecy itself, when in 
the face of all their calamities and all their sins he leaves 
with them this parting word : '' But fear not thou, O Jacob 
my servant, neither be dismayed, O Israel : for, lo, I will 
save thee from afar, and thy seed from the land of their 
captivity ; and Jacob shall return, and shall be quiet and 
at ease, and none shall make him afraid. Fear not thou, 

[246] 



AFTER THE REPRIEVE 

O Jacob my servant, saith Jehovah ; for I am with thee : 
for I will make a full end of aU the nations whither I 
have driven thee ; but I will not make a full end of thee, 
but I will correct thee in measure, and will no wise leave 
thee unpunished " (xlvi, 27, 28). 

Thus the period of Israel's literary history which I have 
called The Formative Centuries goes out in a burial of 
exile and sequestration, but also in a great courage of 
hope ; and already from the midst of the exile a disciple 
of Jeremiah who went to Babylon is striking the note of a 
new era, '' Son of man, what is this proverb that ye have 
in the land of Israel, ' The days are prolonged, and every 
vision faileth ' ? Tell them therefore, Thus saith the Lord 
Jehovah, I will make this proverb to cease, and they shall 
no more use it as a proverb in Israel : but say unto them, 
' The days are at hand, and the fulfilment of every vision ' " 
(Ezek. xii, 22, 23). In the stimulating conditions of a trans- 
planted nation it is time for the w^ords of prophet, lawgiver, 
and sage to work their destined effect ; for the literature of 
ages to draw toward that revised, collected, and coordinated 
form which wdll make it a people's Bible. To trace this 
development will be the endeavor of the ensuing book. 



[247] 



BOOK II 

THE PEOPLE OF A BOOK 



Thy words were found, and I did eat them ; and thy word was unto 
me the joy and rejoicing of my heart : for I am called by thy name, 
O Lord God of hosts. — Jeremiah 

We really learn only from those books which we cannot criticise. 
The author of a book which we could criticise would have to learn from 
us. — Goethe 



[250] 



THE PEOPLE OF A BOOK 

BY THIS historic phrase, appHed by Mohammed to the 
Christians but equally applicable to the Jews before 
Christ, we may designate what the Hebrew people became 
as the result of the long educative experience which began 
with the Chaldean exile, 586 b.c, and extended to the 
coming and ministry of Jesus. They went into exile with 
a heroic history behind them, full of the tokens of Jeho- 
vah's special care and leading. They had already in posses- 
sion a goodly fund of literature, historic, prophetic, poetic ; 
and when the break-up of the Israelitish state came this 
literature was still in full creative tide, in what we have 
called the formative centuries. It already had in some form 
the prophecies of Amos, Hosea, Micah, and Isaiah of Jeru- 
salem ; the popularized book of law which we know as 
Deuteronomy ; many psalms and proverbs compiled under 
King Hezekiah ; and much of the early histories from Gene- 
sis to Kings. In close touch with the exile itself Jeremiah 
was giving his fervid and vigorous warnings in Jerusalem, 
and Ezekiel, beginning five years after the first deportation 
(Ezek. i, 2), was working among the exiles in Chaldea. But 
this varied literary utterance, scattered and hidden, was 
imperfectly coordinated and not yet adjusted to the newer 
times. It needed the touch of the editor and the scholar, 
the organizing sense of the man of letters, who could col- 
lect, revise, and proportion, according to a just appraisal of 
its import. The people must learn, as it were, to read the 
great stories, poems, and prophecies that had already been 
written, and to realize their undying value. 

This w^as the more needed because, in spite of the prom- 
ise and hope of which their literature was full, their national 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL. LITERATURE 

and political existence had seemed to end in irretrievable 
disaster. From 586 b.c. onward the people, suddenly plunged 
into exile, had to submit to foreign domination, which after 
the return to their homeland continued with changes of 
rulers and empires, but with little hope of national inde- 
pendence. Prospects of success in a merely worldly and 
material career seemed to be closed. If then the prophetic 
purport of their history, and the high destiny foretold of 
them, was ever to be realized, it must come in a sense 
and with an application different from worldly, an outcome 
not yet clearly understood. In other words, a new depth 
and strain of meaning must be given to their literature, to 
make it timely for strange new conditions. 

Accordingly, after prophecy has reached its culmination 
during the exile, in Ezekiel and Second Isaiah, the com- 
manding figure of the prophet, with his impassioned and 
creative mission, gradually ceases to hold the central place 
in literature and public appreciation. He gives way to the 
scribe, or scholar, whose interests are largely centered in 
the past, and whose work is more critical and interpretative 
than creative. Under the care of the scribes the body of 
the nation's literature is. first collected and edited, and so 
preserved for the uses of the restored nation. Important 
new works are added, as occasion calls, and the old works 
are revised and filled out with matter suited to the changed 
circumstances of the nation, but with reverent regard for 
the integrity of the old masterpieces of literary composition. 
Then in course of time, and by successive stages, this ac- 
cumulated literature is classified and organized into a canon, 
or library ; to the making of which are applied rigid princi- 
ples of inclusion and exclusion. Later still this canon comes 
to be regarded as a bible, a holy book, with something of 
the structure and essential unity of • a single literary work ; 
which work becomes the main source of the Hebrew race's 
education in religion, morals, and law. Thus, to an extent 

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THE PEOPLE OF A BOOK 

far surpassing any other race of antiquity, the Jews became 
a people grounded in the knowledge of their racial idea, 
and of the meaning of their history, the people of a book. 
In the large sense, then, we may say, it is the business 
of this Jewish people, through the nearly six centuries that 
intervene from the exile to the coming of Christ, to put 
into form and order the book of their life, that is, to articu- 
late the living idea for which as race and people they exist, 
and to get this ingrained in the mind of all classes of the 
people. For this great mission they have been gathering 
rich material, which in spite of their dispersion and subject 
political condition still has unabated power to inspire and 
encourage. As an independent state, maintaining a political 
autonomy among the empires of the earth, their career is 
closed ; but as a community of individuals, with strong racial 
and religious solidarity, their new career is just opening. 
Their mission is to build up the ideal of life anew, not 
from the corporate but from the personal and individual unit 
(cf. Jer. xxxi, 29-34 ; Ezek. xviii, 1-4). For this object 
their formative centuries have already 'developed the organic 
principles. It remains to make these a spiritual power in 
the individual heart, in order that the body of the nation 
may be cultured and sound through and through ; and so, 
with" the discipline of exile and return from it they enter 
upon a new era, which will date no more from Egypt but 
from Chaldea (see Jer. xvi, 14, 15 ; xxiii, 7, 8), and the lands 
whither their God, for their salvation, had driven them. 



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CHAPTER VI 

LITERARY FRUITS OF THE EXILE 

[From 586 to 516 B.C.] 

WHEN the Jewish people were exiled to Chaldea, the 
motive of the deportation was involved in a vast 
scheme on the part of the young king Nebuchadnezzar for 
Motive of the the upbuilding of a world empire and a capital 
Deportation which should be, and which accordingly became, 
one of the wonders of the world. In the words of a modern 
historian : '' Nebuchadnezzar needed builders for his city, 
and he needed a population for it when built. He must 
have husbandmen for his fields, artificers and traders for 
his commerce, soldiers for his armies, sailors for his ships, 
slaves for his palaces*. His foreign wars gave him what he 
sought. When a country was subdued or a city taken, the 
best of its inhabitants, the strongest and bravest and most 
capable, were conveyed forthwith to Babylon. Both Greeks 
and Jews describe this process under the same metaphor — 
that of sweeping as with a dragnet (see Flab, i, 15). Other 
lands were emptied, that the great city might be filled. 
Sometimes almost the entire population of a conquered state 
was swept into its vast enceinte, or dispersed through the 
various towns and villages of Babylonia, the central province 
and nucleus of the Empire. From the ancient cities of 
F2gypt, from the pasture-lands of Syria, from the great 
seapoi^s of Phoenicia, the captive multitudes poured into 
Babylon. The Jews were just such -subjects as a king like 
Nebuchadnezzar required ; and so once and again his armies 
appeared in Palestine, and carried off, in relays, all save 

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LITERARY FRUITS OF THE EXILE 

the dregs of the nation. Nebuchadnezzar required citizens; 
Jehovah sought a people purified by expatriation." i 

This motive of Nebuchadnezzar's conquests was very dif- 
ferent from what had actuated the Assyrian kings, Sargon 
and Sennacherib (722 and 701 B.C.), when the northern king- 
dom fell and the cities of Judah were ravaged. Their motive 
had been pillage and lust of military glory, and their aim 
was to break the spirit of the nations they conquered. 
Nebuchadnezzar's motive was to a greater extent civilizing 
and upbuilding. If his deported subjects were tractable 
they were treated in such a way as not to forfeit their self- 
respect or liberty of opinion and worship.. They were in fact 
more like a transplanted citizenry than like despised slaves. 

As intimated above, they went, so to say, in relays. 
It was in 604 B.C. that the seventy years' term of exile 

TheSucces- (^^' J^^' ^^^' ^^' ^^' ^^^' ^^' ^) virtually be- 
sive Relays gan ; when Nebuchadnezzar, in the fourth year 
of Captivity ^£ Xing Jehoiakim (2 Kings xxiv, i), appeared 
before Jerusalem and, forcing the weak Judean monarch to 
transfer allegiance from Pharaoh Necho of Egypt to him, 
took away vessels from the Temple and several youths of 
the seed royal as hostages, the latter to be trained for 
responsible positions at his court. Among these was a lad 
of about fourteen years old named Daniel (Dan. i, 1-4).^ 

Again in 597 b.c, when Jehoiachin, or Jeconiah, the 
son of Jehoiakim, had been king only three months, 
Nebuchadnezzar appeared before Jerusalem, the young 
king surrendered his whole court to him without fighting, 
and all the best elements of the nation, from princes and 
men of might down to craftsmen and smiths, were carried 
to Babylon, leaving behind only the poorest sort of the 
people of the land (2 Kings xxiv, 10-16). It was to this 

1 Hunter, " The Story of Daniel," p. 28. 

^ The author of the Book of Daniel, writing many years later, seems to 
have got his date (" third year ") a year or so early. 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

company of exiles, likening them to " good figs," that Jere^ 
miah gave his message of hope (Jer. xxiv, 4-7) ; to them 
also that some years after he wrote his friendly and re- 
assuring letter (Jer. xxix, 1-14).^ Arrived in Babylon, the 
captives, apparently without the infliction of special indig- 
nities, were distributed to their allotted places. The body 
of them was taken to Tel-Abib near the present Nippur, 
about fifty miles from Babylon, on the great irrigating 
canal Chebar ; where as a community they were to make 
a home, cultivate their fields, adapt their old customs to 
new conditions, and become citizens of this strange crowded 
land. It was apparently here, or in some such place as this, 
that they received Jeremiah's letter of good advice. 

Jehoiachin the king, in Babylon, became the royal prisoner 
of Judah ; and we lose sight and direct report of him for 
thirty-seven years. 

Zedekiah, the uncle of Jehoiachin, whom Nebuchadnezzar 
had installed as regent in Jerusalem on oath of good be- 
havior, after an uneasy and vacillating reign of eleven years, 
drew the wrath of the Babylonian monarch again upon 
Jerusalem ; and the city was besieged and taken, the Temple 
destroyed, and Zedekiah was caught trying to escape, his 
sons slain before his eyes, and he, his eyes put out, was 
carried in chains to Babylon, where he died. Thus the 
Judean state was broken up in untold horrors of siege and 
battle, and the people were scattered, some to Egypt, some 
to surrounding lands, and some to Babylon. This, the last 
relay of captivity, was in 586 B.C. It was the event com- 
memorated in the Book of Lamentations, a disaster sharing 
with the final destruction of the Jewish state in the mourn- 
ing observed at the Jews' Wailing Place in Jerusalem. 

From the elements thus transplanted at different times 
to Babylon we are to get an idea of literary and cultural 
influences available in their new conditions and allegiance. 

1 See above, p. 243. 

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LITERARY FRUITS OF THE EXILE 

I. Literary Activities in Chaldea 

The Jewish people were now in the center of the greatest 
empire of the earth, surrounded by all the splendors of a 
wealthy and idolatrous civilization, in contact with the busy 
activities of a prosperous monarchy, witnesses of and doubt- 
less participators in its enterprises of husbandry, building, 
and commerce, and on the whole much more comfortably 
situated than they had been in their rugged land of Judah. 
With the keen worldly genius so characteristic of this race, 
the temptation would be stronger and subtler than ever to 
merge their national identity with that of their captors, and 
doubtless many yielded. But the stamina and resiliency of a 
people educated in the school of Jehovah was here meeting 
its supreme test. Out of this sequestered life, with its sense 
of common social and religious interests, and with the in- 
stinctively felt duty of maintaining racial loyalty and integ- 
rity, grew the literary fruits of the Chaldean exile. 

Let us note and describe these, as connected with the 
personal factors with which they originate. 



Ezekiel: Pastor and Reconstructor. While Jeremiah in 
Jerusalem, under the eleven years' reign of the substitute 
king Zedekiah, was still at his troublesome task of pre- 
paring the home people for their hapless doom (cf. Jer. 
xxiv, 8-IO), a younger contemporary and disciple of his, 
Ezekiel, among the captives of the first deportation in 
Chaldea, was addressing himself to the strange new con- 
ditions of this foreign land and preparing his people for the 
nobler destiny ordained for them (cf. again Jer. xxiv, 4-7). 

Of priestly lineage and calling, one of the higher class 
of captives carried away with King Jehoiachin in 597 b.c, 
Ezekiel began his active career five years later (Ezek. i, 2), 
and thus for the six years intervening until the overthrow 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

of Jerusalem in 586 b.c. was collaborator with the older 
prophet in the same cause. As long as the work of the 
pair was contemporaneous, with free interchange and under- 
standing between Chaldea and Jerusalem, his prophecy, like 
that of Jeremiah, took the predominant tone of severity 
and warning (iv— xxxiii) ; but after the city had fallen and the 
political suspense was over he set the remainder of his mes- 
sage (xxxiv-xlviii) in the higher key of hope and reconstruc- 
tion. In this timely work of his, searching yet eminently 
creative, he must be reckoned as one of the greatest spirit- 
ual builders of all time, though like all deep-laid work its 
results must germinate and ripen unseen. 

The author of this prophecy is specifically distinguished at 
the outset as '' Ezekiel the priest, the son of Buzi " (i, 3). 
The Mind of ^^ him, it may be said, the priest's function and 
the Priest ministry become typical. Jeremiah also was of 
priestly stock ; but apparently before he was of age to enter 
upon the ministrations of the Temple (cf. Jer. i, 6) he was 
designated to a duty which caused him long after to be 
esteemed the typical prophet (cf. Matt, xvi, 14). With the 
venal and time-serving prophetic order of his day he was 
in frequent collision, both in Jerusalem and in Chaldea 
(cf. Jer. V, 31; vi, 13; xxix, 15-23), and by his sound 
spiritual sense brought out the prophetic office, as it were, 
into true and reasonable light (cf. Jer. xxiii, 23-32). With 
the priestly office, in turn, which had become equally cor- 
rupt, it fell to Ezekiel's duty to deal ; and this he must do 
as an expatriated man, in a land where he must be without 
altar or organized service, and while for several years the 
Temple at Jerusalem was still standing. It was as if he 
must develop the office on a new line. In other words, 
the priest, laying aside his formal rites and trappings, must 
become a pastor, a counselor, a neighbor ; striving thus to 
keep the true function alive and adapt it to more intimate 
and individual relations. Accordingly, as soon as he was 



LITERARY FRUITS OF THE EXILE 

thirty years old (i, 3)/ the age at which by ancient pre- 
scription he could enter upon his office (cf. Num. iv, 3), 
he received his first, visions from Jehovah and his com- 
mission to be a "watchman unto the house of Israel" 
(iii, 17). It was doubtless from tKe influence of these pas- 
toral ministrations of his that the Jewish religious services, 
which for the people at home were and continued to be 
centered in the Temple, came in time, for the Jews of the 
dispersion, to be distributed in the less elaborate observances 
of the Synagogue. 

One can easily feel, throughout the Book of Ezekiel, 
that his was the distinctive mind of the priest, bent on 
making the conscience of the sanctuary prevail. The book 
is indeed suffused with the priestly atmosphere and feeling. 
He' carries the sense of a responsibility as strong as life 
itself for the spiritual w^elfare of his people (iii, 16-21 ; 
xxxiii, 1-9) ; is scrupulous for cleanness of food in this 
unclean land (iv, 13, 14; cf. xxii, 26); has a holy man's 
dread of the insidious lure of idolatry (xiv, 1-5) ; and is 
reassured by the promise that Jehovah ''will be to them 
a sanctuary for a little while in the countries where they 
are come" (xi, 16). More than this, his visions of Jehovah's 
glory, vouchsafed while yet the city stands, deal with the 
outraged Temple service in Jerusalem (viii-xi) ; and after 
the downfall of the state his constructive care and planning 
are devoted to the reestablishment of Temple and service for 
the captives on their return (xl-xlviii). All this is of the 
essential priestly consciousness and temperament, reflecting 
a mind that by hereditary tradition and training demands a 
pure and orderly system of worship. In the absence of 
liturgical apparatus, however, he must needs resort to more 
intimate and personal methods than at home ; doing his 
work not by temple and altar but by neighborly conference 

1 So I am disposed to interpret " the thirtieth year " (i, i), though there 
are differences of opinion as to what this means. 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

and counsel, and by literary portrayal. So the priest be- 
comes the pastor ; the preacher, who may perhaps have 
been debarred from public address (cf. iii, 25, 26), becomes 
the inventive man of letters. 

As regards its structure, the Book of-Ezekiel, though its 
general movement is lucid enough, betrays to some extent 
Com osition ^^^ naivcte of an author to whom the art of 
and style of literary invention is new. It should be noted 
* ^ °° that his seems to have been one of the earliest 

books to adopt the written as distinguished from the oral 
type, and his sense of organism is naturally somewhat un- 
developed. He has not yet worked out the idea of a logi- 
cally interrelated structure, wherein part rises out of part 
and makes for consecution and climax. The framework of 
the book, if such it can be called, is like that of a diarist 
or journalist ; the happening in time seeming to have a 
greater logical value in his mind than it has in the co- 
ordination of ideas. Accordingly, he arranges (or records) 
his material according to the dates when messages from 
Jehovah came to him ; which dates are scrupulously noted, 
mostly through the years that intervened before the down- 
fall of the Jewish state. Two exceptions occurring, wherein 
the prophet puts an oracle out of its chronological order for 
the sake of logical continuity, may be noted as an indication 
of his developing sense of organism ; namely, xxvi, xxvii, 
the eleventh year put with the ninth, and xxix, 17-20, the 
twenty-seventh year put by way of correction with the tenth. 

Note. EzekieVs Structure. The following table gives EzekiePs 
dates : 

" Now it came to pass in the thirtieth year, in the fourth month, in 
the fifth day of the month, as I was among the captives by the river 
Chebar, that the heavens were opened and I saw visions of God " (i, i , 2). 

All notes of time after this refer to the years of the continuance of 
the captivity, beginning at Jehoiachin's deportation, 597 B. c. 

I . Fifth Year of Captivity, 592 b. c. Chapters i-vii. Beginning fourth 
month, fifth day (cf. above, thirtieth year). 

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LITERARY FRUITS OF THE EXILE 

2. Sixth Year of Captivity, 591 B.C. Chapters viii-xix. Beginning 
sixth month, fifth day. 

3. Seventh Year of Captivity, 590 B.C. Chapters xx-xxiii. Begin- 
ning fifth month, tenth day. 

4. Ninth Year of Captivity, 588 B.C. Chapters xxiv, xxv. Supple- 
mented by corrected oracle on Tyre, dating from eleventh year (first 
day of month), 586 B.C. Chapters xxvi-xxviii. Beginning tenth month, 
tenth day. 

5. Tenth Year of Captivity, 587 B.C. Beginning tenth month, 
twelfth day. Oracles on Egypt, chapters xxix-xxxii. Other dates inter- 
calated, eleventh year, third month, first day, chapter xxxi, and twelfth 
year, twelfth month, first day, chapter xxxii. 

6. Twelfth Year of Captivity, ^8^ B.C. Chapters xxxiii, 21-xxxix. 
Beginning tenth month, fifth day, when a fugitive arrived in Babylon 
and announced the fall of Jerusalem. 

7. Twenty-fifth Year of Captivity, 572 B.C. Chapters xl-xlviii. 
Beginning in the opening of the year, tenth day of the month. 

[The passage on the futile siege of Tyre, xxix, i 7-20, dating from 
the twenty-seventh year of captivity, first month, first day of the month, 
is Ezekiel's last dated prophecy, 570 B.C., ten years before the release 
of Jehoiachin from prison.] 

The style of the book, while vigorous and vivid, shows 
similar marks of a literary art not quite subdued to a limpid 
repose and naturalness. The staring effects of style with 
which the work abounds — visions, symbolic figures, parables, 
acted prophecies — seem to a degree self-conscious and elab- 
orated. In the descriptive passages, too, the choice of details 
is rather accumulative than selective, as if the author had not 
mastered the art of making a little description go a good way. 
One can feel this everywhere in the symbol (for example, iii, 
1-3; xlvii, 1-12), imagery (for example, xvii, i-io), and 
acted prophecy (for example, iv, 1-8) with which his work 
is alive. 

The most salient trait of Ezekiel's style, perhaps, is his ex- 
traordinary realistic and visualizing sense. Every idea seems 
to stand out in concrete form and measure and color, as if 
the matter-of-fact observer were usurping the idealizing con- 
sciousness of the poet. This visualizing power may be felt 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

in such passages as his celebrated vision. of ''the appearance 
of the hkeness of the glory of Jehovah" (i, 4-28), described 
thus in periphrastic terms which virtually evade the actual 
sight of God ; his realistic vision of the charnel valley 
(xxxvii, 1-15); and in the architectural details of the pro- 
jected new temple (xl-xlii), in which last the poet yields 
place to the artisan. In several cases his intense realization 
of things has the effect of clairvoyance (for example, viii, 
3-18 ; cf. xxi, 2 1, 22) or telepathy (xxiv, 2). No other prophet 
has this power in such degree. It is as if, after all the dim 
ways through which Jehovah had led his people, the prophet 
felt himself walking almost in the blaze of fulfillment (cf . xii, 
21-24), and as if his style gathered realism from it. 

The vision of the glory of Jehovah, with which the Book 
of Ezekiel opens, is not to be regarded, for its literary 
Th s tf rneaning, as a mere tour de force of description 
of Mystic serving to introduce the prophet's account of his 
^^^°° call and commission. It would be an extra vas^ant 

disproportion of means to ends if that were all. Rather it 
constitutes the setting for the most searching and poetic 
conception of the whole book. 

True, the vision does serve a very salutary purpose as 
related to the living faith of the prophet and his expatri- 
ated countrymen. It heartens them with the reassuring 
discovery that Jehovah's presence is not confined to the 
homeland, or to the Holy Place still standing in Jerusalem. 
They can dismiss that ancient folk-notion ; for He has ap- 
peared here in this idol-ridden land of Chaldea, has given 
His priest-prophet a specific and practical ministry, and in- 
spired him to say, ''Thus saith the Lord Jehovah: Whereas 
I have removed them far off among the nations, and whereas 
I have scattered them among the countries, yet will I be to 
them a sanctuary for a little while in the countries where 
they are come " (xi, 16). This is much, is of untold signifi- 
cance to Israel in this time of ignominy and sequestration. 

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LITERARY FRUITS OF THE EXILE 

But more than this. The successive appearances of the 
vision (for the appearance in the first chapter is not the 
only one), as the prophet reports them, form in fact a kind 
of dramatic framework for the visuahzing of Jehovah's inner 
lesson and purpose. The prophet next sees the vision in 
the sixth year of the captivity (viii, i), and in Jerusalem, 
whither he has been transported in spirit to observe the 
profanations and abominations that are practiced in the very 
Temple courts. Chapters viii to xi give the account of it. 
He sees the whole Temple precinct and its secret places 
infested with various uncouth rites, men worshiping with 
their backs toward the Temple proper and in the avowed 
belief that Jehovah has forsaken the land (viii, 12 ; ix, 9). 
The glory of Jehovah is still there, however, to eyes that 
can see, as it was in the plain of Chaldea (viii, 4). But 
even while he looks, after certain mystic commands and 
oracles are given he beholds it rise from the inner fane, its 
ancient dwelling place, stand awhile over the threshold (x, 4), 
then with its convoy of cherubim remove from there, pause 
over the east gate (x, 18, 19), and finally, after various 
oracles minatory and comforting uttered, depart from the 
desecrated city and take up its station on the Mount of 
Olives (''the mountain which is on the east side of the 
city"). It is as if Jehovah were banished but still on 
guard (xi, 22, 23). 

Here the vision leaves him to his years of prophetic and 
priestly ministry. When, however, in the twenty-fifth year 
of the captivity (xl, i), he returns in spirit to Jerusalem, 
now fourteen years in ruins, and has seen completed the 
elaborate plans for the rebuilding and reconsecration of the 
Temple, he is taken to the eastward-looking gate, and there 
he sees again the same glory of Jehovah reappear '' from 
the way of the east," its unseen station, and resume its 
residence in the rebuilt Holy Place, filling it with conse- 
cration and splendor (xliii, 1-5). It is from under the 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

threshold of this restored Temple that the prophet, when 
all is in its new order, sees living waters issuing eastward 
toward the Dead Sea region and deepening into a mighty 
river, a source of healing and purity and fruitfulness for 
all the nations (xlvii, 1-12). 

Thus, as we follow the movement of this mystic vision, 
with its wonderful blend of realism and symbol, we find it 
a singularly poetic setting for the great ideal which pos- 
sessed the priestly prophetic mind of Ezekiel, the ideal of 
a religion and cultus which should be as it were a new 
creation in Israel. We can gauge the informing spirit of 
his whole career from this ; it was the inspiration that sup- 
ported him in his years of striving with a '' rebellious 
house " (cf. iii, 8, 9)'. 

•Toward this great end he worked consistently as occasion 
served, with his eye on conditions alike in Chaldea and 
Whii T - J^i'usalem, until in 586 B.C. city and Temple 
saiem Awaits fell. More than half of his book, in fact, is 
her Doom ^^j^^^^ ^^ ^-^j^ oracles dated between the fifth 

year of King Jehoiachin's captivity (i, 2) and the twelfth, 
in which latter year a fugitive from the siege reported to 
him that the city was smitten (xxxiii, 21). During that 
time he had a keen sense, at times almost clairvoyant or 
telepathic, of what was going on in the homeland : of the 
inevitable doom of the city (iv, v) ; of the shameless idol- 
atries of the Temple and infidelity of the leaders (viii, ix) ; 
of the faithlessness of King Zedekiah to his word (xvii, 
1 1 -21); of the divination held by the invading king "at 
the parting of the way " and the decision to march against 
Jerusalem instead of Rabbah of Ammon (xxi, 18-27); of 
the beginning of the actual siege, wherein the city was to 
be destroyed in its dirt like a rusty caldron (xxiv, 1-14). 
All these things he makes the occasion of oracles, in which 
his realizing imagination ranges over a crowded field of 
figure and allegory, riddling parable (xvii, 2) and lamentation 

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LITERARY FRUITS OF THE EXILE 

(xix, I), in his endeavor to bring home to Israel their perilous 
moral and spiritual plight. 

With the exiles among whom he dwells, also, he is con- 
cerned ; and mainly lest in this land of idols they be 
ensnared by the insidious lure and luxury of their sur- 
roundings, "taking the idols into their hearts," and losing 
in consequence the sanity, the poise, the singleness of vision 
which loyalty to Jehovah would ensure. What his plea 
amounts to is the alternative of debauching their own minds 
or keeping them straight and sound ; and the prophet puts 
it in terms of their relation to the word of Jehovah. When 
the elders of Israel come to sit before him, as in old time 
the elders sat before Elisha (cf. 2 Kings vi, 32), the word 
from Jehovah is, '' Son of man, these men have taken their 
idols into their heart, and put the stumblingblock of their 
iniquity before their face : should I be inquired of at all by 
them ? Therefore speak unto them, and say unto them, 
Thus saith the Lord Jehovah : ' Every man of the house 
of Israel that taketh his idols into his heart, and putteth 
the stumblingblock of his iniquity before his face, and 
cometh to the prophet ; I Jehovah will answer him therein 
according to the multitude of his idols ; that I may take the 
house of Israel in their own heart, because they are all es- 
tranged from me through their idols '" (see xiv, i-ii). 

Such is Ezekiel's arraignment of his people whenever 
the leaders come to him to inquire. In an earlier session 
with them (viii, i), he exposes by his trance visit to Jeru- 
salem the same idolatrous infection and estrangement as it 
is dominant there : " Son of man, hast thou seen what the 
elders of the house of Israel do in the dark, every man in 
his chambers of imagery ? for they say, Jehovah seeth us 
not* Jehovah hath forsaken the land" (viii, 12). And in 
a later session he denies their request for an oracle, on the 
ground that their inveterate idolatrous tendency, imbibed 
through all their history from wilderness days, has brought 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

them to the danger of lapsing from their noble traditions 
and becoming merged with the heathen. '' Shall I be in- 
quired of by you, O house of Israel ? As I live, saith the 
Lord Jehovah, I will not be inquired of by you ; and that 
which Cometh into 3^our mind shall not be at all, in that 
ye say, ' We will be as the nations, as the families of the 
countries, to serve wood and stone'" (xx, 31, 32). Thus 
Ezekiel's contention, like that of all the prophets, is with 
his people's mind, the mind that an idolatrous imagination 
produces, a mind closed to the pure word of God. With 
their heart, too, their nature as expressed ideally in love and 
loyalty, he has a still stronger arraignment ; and to set this 
forth he has recourse to the figure of adultery, used by the 
prophets since Hosea ; ^ which figure he intensifies and fol- 
lows into lengthy detail in an allegorico-historical review, chap- 
ter xvi, and in the parable of Oholah and Oholibah, applied 
to the two capital cities Samaria and Jerusalem, chapter xxiii. 
Besides this fight for the disinfecting of the nation's 
mind, we have to note the noble team work that Ezekiel 
and his contemporary Jeremiah were doing together, Ezekiel 
to better advantage because, being removed from the tur- 
moil of an inevitable crisis, he could estimate matters as it 
were from a distance and get their bearings and perspective. 
One main difficulty that both prophets felt in Israel was 
the lack of wise and upright leadership. The power of a 
masterful personality, some 

still strong man in a blatant land, 

was sorely needed ; the pair evidently did not realize what 
an influence they themselves were. '' And I sought for a 
man among them," was Ezekiel's word from Jehovah, ''that 
should build up the wall, and stand in the gap before me for 
the land, that I should not destroy it ; but I found none " 
(xxii, 30 ; cf. Jer. v, i). A similar lack is predicted of the 

1 See above, p. 155. 
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LITERARY FRUITS OF THE EXILE 

great empire of Babylon, where the exiles now are, in 
Isaiah xiii, 12, and in the Second Isaiah xli, 28. True, there 
were prophets galore, ready to inflame the people's mind 
with radiant hopes ; but both Jeremiah and Ezekiel have 
a sweeping indictment against them (Jer. xxiii, 23-32 ; 
Ezek. xiii) ; they are " fool prophets, that follow their own 
spirit and have seen nothing" (xiii, 3) — shallow, unmotived 
diviners, whose false words ''have healed also the hurt of 
my people slightly, saying, ' Peace, peace,' when there is 
no peace" (Jer. vi, 14; viii, 11) ; or as Ezekiel puts it in 
metaphor, ''they have seduced my people, saying, 'Peace'; 
and there is no peace ; and when one buildeth up a wall, 
behold, they daub it with whitewash " (xiii, 10). It is no 
time for shortsighted or ungrounded hopes. Both prophets, 
feeling the gravity of the situation, are virtually committed 
to the truth enunciated later by the Second Isaiah, "There 
is no peace, saith Jehovah, to the wicked " (Isa. xlviii, 22 ; 
Ivii, 21); and the perpetual fight of prophecy is not with 
armies or monarchies but with wickedness. So when the 
king of Babylon has cast the lot to invade Jerusalem, 
where "the prince of Israel" (Zedeki'ah) is nearing his 
fate, Ezekiel's oracle sets its hope on a personality yet to 
come : "I will overturn, overturn, overturn it : this also 
shall be no more, until he come whose right it is ; and I 
will give it him " (xxi, 27). 

The weightiest idea, perhaps, in which the two prophets 
are at one, is the idea, deduced from a current proverb, 
th|t henceforth Jehovah's account with man must be not 
with the race or clan or family, not with vicarious merit or 
heredity, but with the individual soul. " In those days," 
says Jeremiah, "they shall say no more, 'The fathers have 
eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth are set on edge.' 
But every one shall die for his own iniquity : every man 
that eateth the sour grapes, his teeth shall be set on edge" 
(Jer. xxxi, 29, 30). From this somber conclusion, however, 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

he goes on to predict the era of a new covenant, wherein 
each individual soul will have the light and law not in his 
neighbor but in himself (vss. 31-34). Ezekiel quotes the 
same proverb, asserting also its discontinuance (xviii, 2, 3) ; 
and draws virtually the same conclusion in more literal 
terms : '' Behold, all souls are mine ; as the soul of the 
father, so also the soul of the son is mine : the soul that 
sinneth, it shall die" (vs. 4). The chapter is taken up with 
a repetitious enlargement of this proposition, in which the 
prophet reduces to detail his idea of the things in life to 
do or avoid, and closes with an impassioned plea to turn 
from iniquity and make ''a new heart and a new spirit " 
(xviii, 31). He takes up the same line of thought again in 
chapter xxxiii, 1—20, as a kind of final warning, before the 
doom of the city is reported. In an earlier chapter, too, he 
emphasizes the like idea of individual dependence, in his 
reiterated assertion about an imperilled land, that ''though 
these three men, Noah, Daniel, and Job, were in it, they 
should deliver but their own souls by their righteousness, 
saith the Lord Jehovah" (see xiv, 12-20). The time has 
evidently come wh*en ancestry or pride of race or '' pull " 
with renowned men can no longer be counted on for sal- 
vation ; men's desert and destiny have become a personal 
matter ; in this overthrow of their state, in this ordeal of 
homelessness and dispersion, each Israelite must learn, as 
it were, to be his own king. This is perhaps the most 
momentous and far-reaching lesson deduced by prophecy 
from the Chaldean exile. 1 

It was not without a sense of discouragement and failure 
that the prophet finished his austere warnings and denunci- 
ations while Jerusalem awaited her doom. His picturesque 
and intense literary portrayals had perhaps overshot their 
mark, and from his nervous lack of sympathy and humor 
he had not allowed for shrinkage of effect. From the com- 
plaints he made, it would seem that the people came to 

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LITERARY FRUITS OF THE EXILE 

discount his severe vehemence as due in some degree to 
Hterary exuberance ; which led to regarding him not as 
an ex cathedra prophet but as a social entertainer. At the 
close of one of his most lurid oracles he had to complain, 
"Ah Lord Jehovah! they say of me, 'Is he not a speaker 
of parables?'" (see xx, 45-49). And even when the long- 
dreaded doom of Jerusalem was reported, and he was de- 
ploring its fearful disasters, the word from Jehovah which 
punctuated it was: ''And as for thee, son of man, the 
children of thy people talk of thee by the walls and in the 
doors of the houses, and speak one to another, every one 
to his brother, saying, ' Come, I pray you, and hear what 
is the word that cometh forth from Jehovah.' And they 
come to thee as the people cometh, and they sit before 
thee as my people, and they hear thy words, but do them 
not ; for with their mouth they show much love, but their 
heart goeth after their gain. And lo, thou art unto them 
as a very lovely song of one that hath a pleasant voice, and 
can play well on an instrument ; for they hear thy words, but 
they do them not. And when this cometh to pass (behold, 
it cometh), then shall they know that a prophet hath been 
among them" (xxxiii, 30-33). 

But perhaps his fervid pastoral work was having a more 
gracious effect than he deemed. Perhaps, after all, the 
stress of their idolatrous obsession was yielding to their 
own good sense, and they were coming to their ancestral 
heritage of simple faith. If so, they could discount his 
vehemence ; the occasion for it was passing. 

It has been remarked above that after the political sus- 
pense of the nation was over Ezekiel, like Jeremiah, left 
his note of severity and warning and set the remainder of 
his message in the higher key of hope and reconstruction .^ 
For Ezekiel, however, with his priestly coloring of life, 
the suspense had not been political but religious ; he was 

1 See above, p. 258. 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

concerned for the fate of the Temple and its service and 
for the rehgious fiber of his people both in Chaldea and 
F 1 m Jerusalem. The turning-point, the pivot, of his 
of a New prophetic strain, accordingly, comes not v^hen, 
^^®^ a year and a half late, the fall of the city is 

reported to him (xxxiii, 21), but when in the ninth year, 
two years before the end, he became aware by a telepathic 
thrill that the king of Babylon was drawing close to Jeru- 
salem, and that its doom therefore was inevitable (xxiv, 1,2). 
This seems to have been the date of cardinal significance to 
the people ; noted as it was by the historians (see 2 Kings 
XXV, i; Jer. lii, 4), and impressed dramatically by the 
prophet's mute grief for the death of his wife (xxiv, 
15-24), by which act he made himself ''a sign" to the 
house of Israel (vss. 24, 27). And his first thought is not, 
like Jeremiah's, for the horrors of siege and slaughter (his 
nature is not so tender and sympathetic as Jeremiah's), but 
for his beloved Temple and its sacred associations. '' Thus 
saith the Lord Jehovah: 'Behold, I will profane my sanctu- 
ary, the pride of your power, the desire of your eyes, the 
pity of your soul '" (vs. 21). With this event, which meant 
so much to him, was connected, as it would seem, a mys- 
terious impediment of dumbness laid upon him at the be- 
ginning of his career (see iii, 25-27). When, however, he 
became aware of the investment of the city he received with 
it the prediction that his dumbness would yield when a fugi- 
tive reported the final catastrophe to him (xxiv, 25-27.) ; 
and three years later he recorded the literal fulfillment of 
this prediction (xxxiii, 22). All this seems to indicate that 
Ezekiel's prophetic insight and conviction, ripening to the 
time when he could speak out and reveal the real trend of 
his people's experience and mission, was a thing of gradual 
growth. Pending that time it would not do for him to be 
a reprover (cf. iii, 26) ; he must await events in silence, 
speaking only as Jehovah opened his mouth (cf. xxix, 21). 

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LITERARY FRUITS OF THE EXILE 

The first intimations of a coming new order are of a 
negative character, having to do with the fate of the 
neighbor nations with whom Israel's destiny is involved. 
The oracle pronounced on all these nations is, ' ' And they 
shall know that I am Jehovah." Such will be the revela- 
tion of the new order to them. As soon as the prophet is 
aware that this is Jerusalem's supreme ordeal, when like a 
caldron she must be purged of her rust and dross and dirt 
(xxiv, 3-14 ; cf. xxii, 17-22), he devotes the chapters from 
XXV to xxxii to describing the fate that shall overtake these 
nations as a consequence of their attitude toward Jerusalem 
in this time of her calamity. His intimation is that Israel 
is destined to be a kind of spiritual touchstone for humanity, 
possessing a law of life which cannot be despised with im- 
punity, and which will prove its universality when the nations 
that rejoiced over her downfall are gone. Such is the large 
idea toward which all the prophets have more or less con- 
sciously been impelled ; and to Ezekiel it is opening up in 
this negative way. Seven nations are chosen for this strain 
of warning prophecy ; with special emphasis on Tyre for her 
commercial arrogance (chaps, xxvi-xxviii, 19; xxix, 17-20), 
and on Egypt, ['the great monster that lieth in the midst 
of his rivers" (xxix, 1-16; xxx-xxxii), ending (xxxii, 17-31) 
with an impressive description of Egypt along with the other 
wicked nations in the sepulchers of the underworld. 

Note. In these chapters on the hostile nations we seem to come 
upon Ezekiel's sense of the purport of the prophecy long ago given to 
Abraham, ^' I will bless them that bless thee, and him that curseth thee 
will I curse ; and in thee shall all the famihes of the earth be blessed " 
(Gen. xii, 3). Following are the prophet's reasons for the evil fate that 
is to overtake these seven neighbor nations. 

Ammon. " Because thou saidst, 'Aha,' against my sanctuary, when it 
was profaned ; and against the land of Israel, when it was made desolate ; 
and against the house of Judah, when they went into captivity" (xxv, 3). 

Moab and Seir. " Because that Moab and Seir do say, ' Behold, the 
house of Judah is Uke unto all the nations ' " (xxv, 8). 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

Edom. '' Because that Edom hath dealt against the house of Judah 
by taking vengeance, and hath greatly offended and revenged himself 
upon them" (xxv, 12). "Because thou hast had a perpetual enmity, 
and hast given over the children of Israel to the power of the sword 
in the time of their calamity, in the time of the iniquity of the end" 
(xxxv, 5. See also above, p. 215). 

Tyre. " Because that Tyre hath said against Jerusalem, * Aha, she is 
broken that was the gate of the peoples ; she is turned unto me ; I shall 
be replenished now that she is laid waste ' " (xxvi, 2), 

Sidon. " And there shall be no more a pricking brier unto the house 
of Israel, nor a hurting thorn of any that are round about them, that 
did despite unto them " (xxviii, 24). 

Egypt. '' Because they have been a staff of reed to the house of 
Israel. When they took hold of thee by the hand, thou didst break, 
and didst rend all their shoulders ; and when they leaned upon thee, 
thou brakest, and madest all their loins to be at a stand " (xxix, 6, 7). 

For the general attitude of the literary prophets toward historical 
movements and their estimate of character in national units, see above, 
pp. 141, 142. 

When, however, in chapter xxxiii, the fugitive from 
Jerusalem brought the report that the city was smitten, the 
prophet, released from his long dumbness, entered at once 
on the reconstructive strain that increasingly characterizes 
the latter part of his prophecy. No longer addressing him- 
self to the nations, he turns to his own people, as if he 
would trace to their fruitage the germs of good that are in 
them. He begins — taking up a strain which Jeremiah has 
broached and his own experience has stressed — with a 
chapter on the shepherds of Israel, who "feed themselves" 
and wrong the sheep (xxxiv ; cf. Jer. xxiii, 1-4). As Jere- 
miah has made his denunciation the occasion of prophesying 
the raising up of the righteous Branch, who " shall reign as 
king and deal wisely," so by like sequence Ezekiel makes 
his censure of the unpastoral shepherds the occasion of a 
similar Messianic oracle : '' And I will set up one shepherd 
over them, and he shall feed them, even my servant David ; 
he shall feed them, and he shall be their shepherd. And I, 

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LITERARY FRUITS OF THE EXILE 

Jehovah, will be their God, and my servant David prince 
among them; I, Jehovah, have spoken it" (xxxiv, 23, 24). 
Thus from the pastor's office, into which he has trans- 
formed his priesthood, Ezekiel deduces the same prophecy 
that Micah broached more than a century before from the 
little town of Bethlehem (Mic. v, 2-5) ;i making the oracle 
much more clear and comprehensive, as the time of fulfill- 
ment draws nearer. 

Note. The Shepherd Chapter: It may not be superfluous to remind 
the reader here that the word " pastor," which has become- so thoroughly 
naturahzed in our language, is just the Latin word for shepherd; that is 
why we have used it to characterize Ezekiel. This beautiful thirty-fourth 
chapter is, in the shepherd imagery of the Old Testament, what John x, 
I -1 8, is in that of the New; the relation of the two passages being that 
of presage and fulfillment. This chapter of Ezekiel is in large part the 
original suggestion of the celebrated lines in Milton's " Lycidas " (11. 1 14- 
1 29), describing as it does 

such as, for their bellies' sake, 
Creep, and intrude, and climb into the fold. 
Of other care they little reckoning make 
Than how to scramble at the shearers' feast, 
And shove away the worthy bidden guest. 
Blind mouths ! . . . 

The hungry sheep look up, and are not fed, 
But, swoln with wind, and the rank mist they draw, 
Rot inwardly, and foul contagion spread ; 
Besides what the grim wolf with privy paw 
Daily devours apace, and nothing said. 

After an interlude of reiterated denunciation upon Edom 
for her envy and hatred in this time of Israel's calamity 
(xxxv), the prophet proceeds from the thought of the shep- 
herds with their divinely appointed Head, to the thought of 
the land and people over whom they are to have charge. 
True to his priestly temperament, he begins with the moun- 
tains of Israel, where for centuries has been carried on the 
foul and corrupting high-place worship, and whose desolation 

1 See above, p. 164. 
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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

he has already predicted (vi ; of. xx, 27-32). At this time 
when the enemy has said, ''Aha!" and^ ''The ancient high 
places are ours in possession" (xxxvi, 2), he prophesies that 
these mountains will be purged and purified, will become 
populous and fruitful, and be inhabited by a regenerate 
people sprinkled with clean water, with a heart of flesh 
taking the place of their stony heart — a heart made into a 
fit abode of the divine Spirit (xxxvi, 25-31 ; cf. xi, 18-20). 
" So shall the waste cities be filled with flocks of men ; and 
they shall know that I am Jehovah " (xxxvi, 38). 

Following upon this glowing oracle — as if the prophet's 
intense imagination must go on to visualize, in all its 
process, the wonderful uprise of this coming new order 

— is his celebrated description of the valley of dry bones 
(xxxvii, I- 1 4), wherein at the bidding of Jehovah through 
his prophet the bones come together out of dust and dis- 
persion and take on flesh and sinew, and at another bid- 
ding inhale breath and consciousness, "and they lived, and 
stood up upon their feet, an exceeding great army." It 
is a vision ; but it is made actual in terms of resurrection 

— like a veritable coming out of the grave to new life. 
Such, in Ezekiel's view, shall be Israel's uprise and return. 
Nor does it mean part or remnant alone ; the prophet is 
thinking on a national scale. By his acted parable of the 
two sticks joined together (xxxvii, 15-28), which follows 
immediately on this vision, he brings out into greater defi- 
niteness the prophecies broached long before (see Isa. xi, 
12, 13; Hos. i, II ; Jer. iii, 18) — of the happy reunion 
of the kingdoms long separated, Judah and Israel, in their 
own recovered land, and under one king and shepherd, 
"my servant David," who "shall be their prince for ever." 
Here we may put the culmination of Ezekiel's book of 
prophecy — a book eminently characteristic of " Ezekiel 
the priest, the son of Buzi " (i, 3). The priestly mind 
and coloring are consistent throughout. His prophetic 

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LITERARY FRUITS OF THE EXILE 

dream is to see Israel reestablished not on a political but 
a religious basis, with a law and spirit and cultus to corre- 
spond. '' Moreover," he concludes, " I will make a cove- 
nant of peace with them ; it shall be an everlasting 
covenant with them ; and I will place them, and multiply 
them, and will set my sanctuary in the midst of them 
for evermore. My tabernacle also shall be with them ; 
and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. 
And the nations shall know that I am Jehovah that 
sanctifieth Israel, when my sanctuary shall be in the 
midst of them for evermore " (xxxvii; 26-28). 

But a larger horizon opens. He has measured the fate 
of Israel with that of the seven neighbor nations, and has 
AnApocaiyp- Seen his beloved people surviving their ordeal of 
tic Portent exile, restored, reunited, happy in their purged 
and prosperous homeland. But there are other nations be- 
yond, fierce and strange, who have not yet known the touch- 
stone of Jehovah's light and law ; and '' after many d^ys " 
they shall be visited, and Israel shall undergo a final and 
triumphant test. In describing this ultimate event Ezekiel 
launches boldly into apocalyptic — a type of prophecy in 
which he is succeeded by Daniel and a whole school ; it is 
true of him as his sceptical people had said, ''The vision 
that he seeth is for many days to come, and he prophesieth 
of times that are far off" (xii, 27). '' Son of man," is the 
divine bidding, " set thy face toward Gog, of the land of 
Magog, the prince of Rosh, Meshech, and Tubal" (xxxviii, 2). 
This Gog seems to have been a monarch who was a kind of 
emperor over several states or provinces. Jehovah's word to 
him is, ''It shall come to pass in that day, that things shall 
come into thy mind, and thou shalt devise an evil device ' ' ; 
the device being the valiant ambition to help himself by 
the arbitrary might of militarism to the material wealth of 
nations that through their toil and virtue have become pros- 
perous but are now dwelling defenseless and at peace — a 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

device which recent history has made very reaUstic (xxxviii, 
10-13). Ezekiel interprets this, however, in larger terms. 
It is to be Gog's coming to judgment, when he will meet a 
fate for which his militarism has not prepared him (xxxviii, 
7 ; cf. Joel iii, 9-13). In other words, this invasion of bar- 
barous hordes is taken as the final uprise of the forces of 
evil against the righteous ; and the defeat, which is abso- 
lute and ultimate, is attributed not only to the counter 
might of man, but to the mysterious power of Jehovah, 
who will rise in fiery wrath against the outrage, and make 
the invasion issue in the eternal confirmation of Israel's 
peace, "for I have poured out my spirit upon the house of 
Israel, saith the Lord Jehovah" (xxxix, 29). This prophecy 
of Gog and Magog became an element of the later apoca- 
lyptic : it is taken up and adapted to a Christian applica- 
tion, with supernatural elements, in the last book of the 
Bible (see Rev. xx, 7-10). 

Fourteen years pass before we have another dated proph- 
ecy from Ezekiel ; and then, in the twenty-fifth year of the 
F m Pre - captivity, he again, as at the beginning, had 
age to Fin- '* visions of God " — or rather a single vision, 
ished an which, with elucidations, takes up the remainder 
of his book (xl-xlviii). It is his long-cherished ideal of a 
rebuilt Temple and of a reorganized cultus. This is so 
vividly realized in his mind that it stands before us in 
specific measurements and details, like an architect's and 
statesman's design. He describes it, however, objectively, 
as is quite the way of his extraordinary visualizing sense. 
'' In the visions of God," his account begins, '' brought he me 
into the land of Israel, and set me down upon a very high 
mountain, whereon was as it were the frame of a city on 
the south. And he brought me thither ; and behold, there 
was a man, whose appearance was like the appearance of 
brass, with a line of flax in his hand, and a measuring 
reed ; and he stood in the gate " (xl, 2, 3). This man 

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LITERARY FRUITS OF THE EXILE 

conducts the prophet about from point to point, measuring 
systematically all the parts of the Temple structure, with 
its chambers and galleries and courts, and explaining their 
uses ; '' for," he says, '' to the intent that I may show 
them unto thee, art thou brought hither ; declare all that 
thou seest to the house of Israel " (xl, 4). 

All this reads like a masterly blend of the imaginative 
and the real ; and the rest, though spiritual elements enter 
to color it, is equally so. In describing the setting of 
mystic vision, we have traced the movements of the ''glory 
of Jehovah " onward to its return, after banishment, to his 
rebuilt fane.^ When this impressive event has taken place 
(xliii, 1-5), the prophet hears one speaking out of the midst 
of the house ; and a man stands by him to explain the fur- 
nishings of the Temple, and the laws and ordinances by 
which it is to be kept holy. This gives occasion to lay out 
a law oi priesthood and service, an ordinance thought to be 
intermediate between Deuteronomy, which was brought to 
light in Josiah's time, and Leviticus, which was probably 
brought with the completed , Pentateuch to Jerusalem by 
Ezra the scribe and published in 444 b.c. These chapters 
of Ezekiel from xliii to xlvi were at all events very influen- 
tial in determining the final development of the ritual law. 

All this, with its legal and architectural details, seems 
to a modern imagination prosaic enough ; but that a genu- 
ine thread of poetry is woven with it, and that it is con- 
ceived more spiritually than literally, may be felt not only 
from the behavior of the divine glory but from the final 
vision of the waters issuing from under the threshold of 
the Temple and gradually deepening without visible affluents 
as they flow through the barren lands toward the plain of 
the Dead Sea, where they become the wholesome bearers 
of beauty and fertility and healing to all the land (xlvii, 
I- 1 2). It is a symbolical picture giving the spiritual key 

1 See above, p. 263. 
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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

to all this later stage of vision. From it the prophet goes 
on (xlvii, 13-xlviii, 35) in his literalistic way to divide the 
Holy Land and apportion it among the restored tribes, 
with their prince and priesthood, according to a diagram 
which in actual application is as Utopian' as is the vision 
of the waters, revealing as it does rather his sense of order 
and symmetry than his memory of topography. It is his 
prophetic dream reduced to terms of sense perception and 
design. 

So Ezekiel's long and labored book comes to its end, 
a unique monument of watchful fidelity and constructive 
genius. It leaves the vision of temple and city restored 
and whole ; with this finishing touch : ''And the name 
of the city from that day shall be, Jehovah is there " 
(Jehovah-shammah, xlviii, 35) — for, as we may note, he 
has not named it before. 

II 

Daniel : Mage, and Revealer at Court. As the next 
work to be considered in thi^ period of the literature, the 
Book of Daniel, we enter upon one of the most significant 
yet one of the most occult books of the Old Testament. 
In form it is simple enough. It falls into two nearly equal 
portions. The first half (i-vi) narrates experiences of Daniel 
and his three Jewish companions, hostages and students of 
Chaldean learning in Babylon during the exile ; relates also 
two portentous dreams of King Nebuchadnezzar (ii, iv), 
which seem, in a sense, to strike the literary keynote of the 
book. This part, written of Daniel in the third person, 
gives no hint of authorship. The second half (vii-xii), after 
mentioning Daniel as having had a notable dream which he 
recorded (vii, i, 2), gives the rest of the book (except x, i) 
in the first person. This part is made up of a coordinated 
series of dated visions, or revelations, four in number, 
giving a forecast of conditions and events from the year 

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LITERARY FRUITS OF THE EXILE 

after Nebuchadnezzar's dtath/ through a succession of 
world empires, to the eventual coming of "one like unto a 
son of man," who would inaugurate an all-surviving and 
eternal kingdom (vii, 13, 14; cf. ii, 44), before which ad- 
vent, however, a momentous crisis must be met and weath- 
ered. It is to this crisis, indeed, — a time of great peril and 
profanation to the basic Jewish faith (see xi, 28-35), — that 
the movement of the book is steered as its concrete object 
and focus ; the ultimate kingdom with its humane monarch 
revealing itself as an apocalyptic background. 

Thus the Book of Daniel is an intimate compound of 
story and prophecy : story rising out of a cardinal epoch of 
history, prophecy a projection of alleged historic visions. 
Both these elements have traits so dissimilar to what we 
know of exilic literature that we must needs inquire here 
into their relations to their purported time and to the cen- 
turies succeeding. For, clearly, it is only in a modified 
sense — though not therefore less true — that we can reckon 
the Book of Daniel among the literary fruits of the exile. 

As we compare the two portions of the book a remark- 
able circumstance comes to light. The prophetic portion. 
The Literary though its expression is studiously cryptic, works 
Time^a^nd ^P ^^ ^ situation which sets closer to known 
Type historic fact than does the story portion itself 

wherein one would naturally look for factual accuracy. That 
is to say, the course of its visionary revelations draws 
together to an increasingly intimate conversance with his- 
toric conditions and details until, especially in chapter xi 
where the vision style is dropped, one cannot but recognize 
the career of Antioclus IV (Epiphanes), who in 175 to 
164 B.C., by his despotic attempt to force Hellenic culture on 
the Jews of Palestine, precipitated the Maccabean uprising. 
Thus it comes about that at a point about 166 B.C., several 

1 The first year of Belshazzar (vii, i) ; but the author apparently regards 
Belshazzar as the son and successor of Nebuchadnezzar (cf. v, 18). 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

centuries after the Chaldean exile, the prophecies of our 
book become most concrete and verifiable. In marked dis- 
tinction from this, the story portion (i-vi), betraying on the 
part of its writer merely such familiarity with the civic 
history of the exile as might be current in popular tradition, 
is inaccurate as to dates, dynasties, and the like, while it is 
concerned rather with the inner character and motive pecu- 
liar to the Hebrew mind. It is biographical, but not such 
biography as Daniel would have written or dictated. It lacks 
the color of experiences within one's lifetime or familiar 
environment. It harks back, rather, to the more primitive 
manner of the semihistoric legend, such as we read in the 
stories of the patriarchs (cf. especially the story of Joseph 
in Genesis) and of preliterary prophets like Elijah and 
Elisha. Recall here what has been remarked of that naive 
type of literature.^ "It is an accepted datum of scientific 
historians," says Professor A. R. Gordon, ''that legend . . . 
always contains a nucleus of historical fact." Such nucleus 
is not often verifiable, as to its specific details, from con- 
temporary evidence ; this, however, not because the legend 
is untrue but because, taking the material fact for granted, 
it is concerned with a different kind of truth. In the case 
of Daniel, as we shall see,^ an appreciable amount of con- 
temporary evidence exists ; still, the narrative portion of the 
book belongs distinctively to the category of legend. This 
trait, with its imperfect knowledge of historical annals, 
indicates, as does the prophetic matter already noted, a time 
of composition much later than the Chaldean exile, when 
factual minuteness was not essential. 

This verdict of later composition is borne out by the 
literary type to which the book belongs. As to form the 
Book of Daniel has the traits of a Species of literature 
which in times long after the exile came into favorite vogue, 
namely, the historical tale, or, if you please, historical fiction. 

^ See above, pp. ii8, 119. ^ See below, p. 284. 

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LITERARY FRUITS OF THE EXILE 

Books like Ruth and Esther in the canon/ and in the 
apocrypha Judith and Tobit, are of this class. Some people 
are reluctant to attribute the fiction quality to any part of 
the Bible ; the name, however, connotes not falsity but con- 
structive art. Our book, having the indubitable traits of 
such art, bears much the same relation to the time of the 
Chaldean exile that Sir Walter Scott's " Ivanhoe " and 
'' Talisman " bear to the time of Richard Coeur de Lion, 
and is accordingly to be estimated on similar grounds. Of 
a work of historical fiction we require verisimilitude, truth 
to historical character and movement, fidelity to local and 
epochal color. Though in minor details it may make 
mistakes, or even readjust factual circumstances, it must, 
while creating a living picture of the past, earn credence by 
its essential conformity to known events and conditions. If 
the Book of Daniel is true in this liberal sense — and 
nothing that we know makes against this — it is a genuine 
literary product of the exile. 

That it was so regarded from an age not long after its 
publication seems indicated by the fact that it was trans- 
ferred to another part of the canon. Placed by the Hebrew 
scribes just after the Book of Esther in the third division 
of their canon, the so-called Writings {K'thiibhim, Hagi- 
ographa), it was ranked by the Greek translators (the 
Seventy, Septuagint), followed later by the Latin version 
(Vulgate), with the greater prophets, and placed just after 
Ezekiel. It was evidently deemed by these later scholars a 
contribution rather to history and prophecy than to belles- 
lettres, and so its fiction element was ignored. 

The Book of Daniel as we have it is a unit in matter 
and manner, the finished work of one mind ; and yet, 
along with this indubitable fact we must reckon another, 

1 To this list we might add the Book of Jonah, except for its dominat- 
ing strain of allegory, making us hesitate to rank it as a historical tale. 
For Jonah, see below, p. 418. 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

namely, that in the original the book is written in two 
languages. More than half of the book, the portion from 
J, g ii, 4, to the end of chapter vii (' here is the end 

in Folk of the matter," vii, 28), is written in Aramaic 

radition (''the Syrian language," ii, 4). This language, 
being related to the more classical Hebrew somewhat as the 
French is to the Latin, gradually supplanted the Hebrew as 
a more flexible medium for everyday uses and became the 
vernacular of the common people. In another way, too, it 
was analogous to the French, As early as the time of 
Isaiah and the Assyrian invasions it was a lingua franca^ 
employed as French is in modern times for diplornacy and 
international intercourse (cf. Isa. xxxvi, 11); but only the 
Jewish leaders understood it then. It is reasonable to sup- 
pose, however, that when a century later the Jews in a body 
were deported to Chaldea, where the language was strange, 
they would avail themselves "of this lingua fra?ica and make 
it their all-round medium of communication. By the time 
the Book of Daniel was written, accordingly, the Aramaic 
was as generally the folk's language as Yiddish is in our 
day ; while the venerable Hebrew was reserved, as now, for 
sacred and high literary purposes. 

Looking now at this Aramaic section of the Book of 
Daniel, we note that what precedes it (i, i-ii, 4) is merely 
introductory to the narrative, and that what follows it 
(viii-xii) is a series of visions and revelations supplementary 
in character, which round out and concentrate upon the 
Antiochean crisis the dream of Daniel in chapter vii. 
Between these lies the body of the story. In other words, 
the real heart of the book — all indeed that reflects the 
mind of the exile period — is in the tongue of the common 
people, the Aramaic. 

This fact provokes the conjecture that the writer of the 
Book of Daniel had for his main source a folk tradition 
preserved in Aramaic and giving in popular story form the 

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LITERARY FRUITS OF THE EXILE 

experiences of Daniel and his companions. These would 
naturally be given not as they would be reported by one 
within the atmosphere of the court but as they would be 
colored by the imagination of a people proud of their kins- 
man's success and well aware of his stanch loyalty to the 
faith of his fathers. As related to the secrets of the court 
and its congested culture the reporters would be outsiders ; 
but the hints of events that filtered through to them, as it 
were, would be reshaped in the image of their own sphere 
of thought. The result would take much the nature of the 
semihistoric legend ; a legend molded, however, not so 
much by transmission through time as by moral and spiritual 
intuition. Such material the writer of the book, finding it 
to his hand, could work over in the same language and for 
the same class of readers, to meet the conditions of a later 
time. Such seems to me a reasonable explanation of the 
Aramaic source of the Book of Daniel. It goes back to a 
contemporary account — an account crystallized, as it were, 
in the penetrative insight of a spiritually gifted people. 

Such account, in the later retelling, could without loss of 
value bear inaccuracies in historical detail ; could bear also 
u d th elucidations due to a riper stage of prophetic 
Surface of presage. Here, however, we must face a new 
istory difficulty, namely, the dearth of reference to 

Daniel in contemporary annals. A personage so prominent 
in the state as he is represented to have been ought, it 
would seem, to be as widely known to history as to legend 
and literature. As matter of fact, virtually all that we know 
of him is what we get from the book itself. This of course 
does not constitute ^n arg^tmentiini e silentio for his non- 
existence. Obvious reasons can be deduced both from Chal- 
dean and Hebrew history for silence, more indeed than for 
publicity. The accounts of his career must naturally have 
come to posterity through channels under the surface of 
history — through the hidden experiences of the sequestered 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

people of Israel, in whose depths through all those years 
of exile was nursed a secret sense of divine choice and 
promise and deliverance. It would not do for these people 
or their leaders, prisoners as they virtually were, to speak 
out their hopes too plainly, still less for Daniel himself to 
identify himself openly with their cause. They must keep 
their national aspirations hidden, and let the word of Jeho- 
vah make its way by its own intrinsic superiority. Such, as 
we shall see,^ was the attitude maintained by their prophets. 
It was their time to test Isaiah's ancient lesson of ''quietness 
and confidence" (cf. Isa. xxx, 15 ; xxxii, 17). 

Notwithstanding this, however, there are not wanting 
hints of the attitude of the contemporary Jewish mind toward 
their gifted young kinsman at the Babylonian court. We 
may be sure they kept proud and exultant track of him — 
perhaps built hopes on him. There is a passage in Ezekiel, 
written in the sixth year of Jehoiachin's captivity, which 
seems to indicate that the people were inclined to bank 
overmuch on Daniel's influence, with that of others, to 
promote their, release. Speaking of the woes that are still 
imminent on the homeland — for there is no dissociation of 
interests between home and exile — the prophet strenuously 
reiterates, " Though these three men, Noah, Daniel, and 
Job, were in it, they should deliver but their own souls by 
their righteousness, saith the Lord Jehovah " (Ezek. xiv, 14, 
16, 20). These words, if, as I think,^ they refer to the 
Daniel of our present study, date from about the time when 

1 See below, p. 296. 

2 It must in fairness be owned here that others think differently. As 
Daniel is named between Noah, a patriarchal worthy, and Job, a person- 
age of ancient tradition, critics not unreasonably regard Daniel as some 
old-time great man, well known to Ezekiel's readers and typical, but other- 
wise entirely lost to legend or literature. Noah could not well be omitted 
from a connection like this, here in the native land where, as common 
ancestor of Hebrews and Chaldeans alike, he would first come to mind. 
As for the name "Job," this will come up for later consideration; see 
below, pp. 467 ff. 

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LITERARY FRUITS OF THE EXILE 

this contemporary of Ezekiel, younger though of noble 
blood (cf. Dan. i, 3), was at the height of the wonderful 
distinction he had earned by interpreting King Nebuchad- 
nezzar's dream (cf. ii, 48) ; at just which time also the 
exiles' hope of speedy return to Jerusalem, inflamed by their 
too enthusiastic prophets, was running highest (cf . Jer. xxvii, 
14, 16). Like his prophetic colleague Jeremiah, Ezekiel, con- 
scious of the deeper prophetic issue at stake, sought to 
disabuse his people's minds of the false hopes they were 
cherishing. To count on obtaining some sort of " pull," 
through personal influence at court, with the powers of 
state, was a' presumption and a fallacy ; they must abandon 
such vague notions and fall back on their own good be- 
havior. His reference to Daniel, therefore, with this impli- 
cation, seems eminently natural and fitting. 

A later allusion of his to Daniel, made ironically in an 
apostrophe to the self-inflated prince of Tyre, speaks of 
Daniel's wisdom as already famous and proverbial. '' Behold," 
he says, ' * thou art wiser than Daniel ; there is no secret 
that is hidden from thee " (xxviii, 3), — a taunt which takes 
for granted the ground of Daniel's eminence, at least among 
his fellow countrymen, as a man of extraordinary insight 
and sagacity. 

Thus we have direct references giving contemporary 
gleams from under the surface of history. Independently 
of these, too, it seems almost necessary to postulate the 
existence of Daniel, or of some influential personage very 
like him, at the Babylonian court, during the ordeal of 
Israel's long captivity. Priests and pastors like Ezekiel 
were remote from political affairs ; we cannot count on 
them ; and yet that some one was influential, or some group, 
seems evident from actual events. How otherwise can we 
account for the release of King Jehoiachin and the special 
distinction shown him after thirty-seven years' imprisonment 
(2, Kings xxv, 27-30 = Jer. Hi, 31-34); how otherwise for 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

the gracious consent of the Persian king Cyrus, when he 
had taken Babylon, to send the Hebrew captives home to 
Palestine (2 Chron. xxxvi, 22, 23 = Ezra i, 1-3) — not to 
speak- of their comfortable and prosperous life in Chaldea, 
apparently free from indignities, at least during Nebuchad- 
nezzar's reign ? It looks as if, under the surface of- recorded 
history, there were a place where Daniel- just fitted in. 

Of a Daniel whose fame so lived in the faith and pride 
of his people it is reasonable, without recourse to fiction, to 
predicate three things which may be confidently rated as 
matters of authentic fact : 

First, that in a land and court filled with the artificialities 
and vagaries of heathen culture he preserved, though in 
high official station, the simple faith of his fathers and the 
steadfast attitude of loyalty to the inherited traditions of 
his race ; 

Second, that in matters of foresight and statesmanship 
he possessed extraordinary abilities ; surpassing in their 
own learning the attainments of a people whose science and 
occult wisdom had long been the cultural standard of the 
world ; 

Third, that this endowment of his, with its more rational 
concomitant of practical efficiency,- gained him a trusted 
position in the counsels and crises of state, making him 
thus an influential though latent factor of welfare, a real 
guardian and champion at court, through the critical period 
of Israel's exile history. 

In this mediatorial character, which seems to answer to 
a deep strain in the Hebrew type, Daniel has notable 
parallels in Biblical annals : Joseph at the Egyptian court 
in patriarchal times, and Nehemiah at the Persian court 
more than a century after Daniel ; both of w^hom like him, 
eminently faithful and efficient under alien masters, also 
rendered indispensable service to their own people in 
times of need. 

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LITERARY FRUITS OF THE EXILE 

Here then we have what we may confidently take as the 
factual nucleus of the Book of Daniel. It has the worth 
and the limitations of fact. It is external, not vital. The 
rest of the account, if we must put it in the category of 
legend and historical artistry, belongs no less truly to that 
prophetic insight which, sensing things 'as they essentially 
are, penetrates beyond the reach of external fact to the 
sphere of spiritual values. It is this latter quality of the 
work which now comes up for more definite consideration. 

As we ponder the deeper relations of these Daniel 
stories we find ourselves spectators of a tremendously 
At the Center S^^^^ event, nothing less indeed than the spir- 
of World itual encounter toward which the whole strange 
"^^^^^ course of Israel's history has moved. In brief 

general terms we may call this the encounter of Jehovah's 
light and truth with the world's dimness of lies, of the 
gentle solvent of conscience and righteousness with the 
brutal despotism of self-will and idolatry and worldly greed. 
This latter, compounded with the arrogance of conquest 
and self-inflated culture, has reached its most overweening 
stage. We see the encounter, of course, only at its first 
onset, and there is more beyond that remains unseen. But 
here, at the center of world empire, with all the elements in 
readiness, it is as if we had come upon the long-approached 
focal point in the campaign of ages. 

Is this too high a claim to make for it .? Consider what 
has led up to it. 

Jehovah's campaign — we may call it such, since its 
avowed objective was conquest and victory — was sensed 
only vaguely and piecemeal by the line of prophets, for 
they had in charge the issues of their own time and race ; 
but as we put their utterances together we. see the steady 
development of Jehovah's counsels to this end ever since 
the beginning of literary prophecy,^ — nay, since the original 

1 See above, pp. 135-137- 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

call of Abraham out of this very land of Chaldea to a 
land where he could initiate Jehovah's purpose of blessing 
to all the families of the earth (cf. Gen. xii, 1-3). From 
Chaldea, the cradle of religion and learning, back to 
Chaldea again, endowed with the principles of a saner 
religion and a sounder learning ; such was the divinely 
ordered mission of the Hebrew people from the far-off 
patriarchal times.^ The Scripture movement, setting out 
from Chaldea, has at length come round full circle ; 
we can now, to some degree, gauge its meanings as it 
closes for the vital encounter. And what we first see is 
a young man, hostage and captive, standing before the 
mightiest and proudest monarch of the earth, and daring 
to tell him the truth. 

Let us take brief note of the situation. 

The encounter, brought about by King Nebuchadnezzar's 
disturbing dreams (ii, iv), is personal, the touch of man 
and man as it were on equal terms. It reminds one of 
Kipling's lines : 

But there is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor Birth, 
When two strong men stand face to face, tho' they come from the ends 
of the earth ! 

The two who face each other — masterful men both — 
may be taken as in a true sense the epitome, the spiritual 
embodiment, of their respective nations, each representing, 
as it were, his nation's developed idea. It is thus, I 
think, that the author was minded to portray them. We 
seem to see in them, as in a condensing mirror, two char- 
acter products, one molded in the sane and simple disci- 
pline of Jehovah, the other in ' the confused superstitions 
of heathen cults, — two types reduced as it were to per- 
sonal and individual terms and so posed that we can 
compare them. 

1 Cf. above, pp. 34, 35. 
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LITERARY FRUITS OF THE EXILE 

The monarch, personal epitome of "that bitter and hasty 
nation " against which Habakkuk uttered his woes (Hab. 'i, 
6 ; ii, 4-20), is at once absolute and helpless. He is caught 
in the toils of his own unbalanced nature. On the one 
hand, having everything that an arbitrary will accountable 
to none can crave, — power of life and death, freedom from 
check or criticism, limitless command over vast ambitions 
and designs, — he has also the megalomania, the hunger for 
adulation, the motiveless self-will and caprice, that go with 
such unregulated power. On the other hand, though un- 
aware of it, he is at the mercy of his learned and clever 
class, being the virtual prey and tool of "the magicians, 
and the enchanters, and the sorcerers, and the soothsayers, 
and the Chaldeans " (cf. ii, 2 ; iv, 7), whose vaunted learn- 
ing, founded mainly on divination, is an elaborate guesswork, 
and whose answers to his inquiries are either time-serving 
counsels calculated to flatter his desires or subtle inter- 
pretations calculated to promote their own. All this seems 
to condense in one personage the evolved character — or 
rather the spiritual chaos — of a huge unwieldy state with- 
out formed policy or principle, a realm bloated with sheer 
bigness and material wealth and artificial culture ; which, 
as soon as the white light of Jehovah shines in from above, 
betrays its essential hollowness and sterility. To such a 
spiritual atmosphere as this it is that the Book of Daniel 
introduces us. The story is consistent and homo'geneous 
throughout : its various episodes — the golden image and 
fiery furnace (iii), the king's malady (iv), Belshazzar's im- 
pious feast (v), the plot of the lion's den (vi) — belong to 
one barbaric and unholy tissue. It becomes in later apoca- 
lyptic thought the type of all that is infamous in autocracy 
and debasing influence (see Rev. xiv, 8 ; xvii, 5). It is the 
polar opposite to the ordained kingdom of God. 

What I have alluded to above as the white light of 
Jehovah came into this murky atmosphere not by censure 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

of evils as the prophets wrought, not by propaganda or 
vehemence at all ; it came by the still strong presence of 
Daniel's personality. "The righteous shall live by his 
faith," Habakkuk had said of this crucial encounter of 
Jew and Chaldean (Hab. ii, 4). Daniel's experience is the 
victorious proof of this. He had become naturalized in 
Chaldean life and lore ; could speak as an expert in its 
terms ; the whole book indeed, in its dominant coloring 
of dreams and portents and mystic reckonings, is con- 
formed not to native Hebrew thought but to the idiom of 
the Chaldean magi. He does not put forward the name 
of his God nor the claims of his religious faith ; the name 
by which he is known at court (Belteshazzar) is com- 
pounded with the name of the chief Chaldean deity. He 
does not introduce exotic ideas into his interpretations. 
And yet there is a self-evidencing genuineness in his 
words, and still more in his stanch personality, which 
seems to clear the air and set things in true proportion 
and balance. Kings and nobles, turning to him in their 
perplexities; have the sense not only" that " an excellent 
spirit, and knowledge, and understanding, interpreting of 
dreajns, and showing of dark sentences, and dissolving 
of doubts, were found in the same Daniel, whom the king 
named Belteshazzar" (v, 12), but also, with sincere rever- 
ence and awe, that he was a man ''in whom is the spirit of 
the holy gods" (iv, 8, 9; v, 11, 14). Here was one who 
had such cornmerce with divine realities as their guesswork 
erudition could not penetrate ; his wisdom traversed their 
elaborate polytheistic cults, but they had nothing in their 
religion to rival or gainsay him. 

What was the inner effect of Daniel's life on the Baby- 
lonian court we have no means of measuring. But one thing 
is clear : Jehovah, in His campaign of grace, had not left 
Himself without able witness at the center of world empire. 
Nor had He failed to impress upon King Nebuchadnezzar 

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LITERARY FRUITS OF THE EXILE 

through the latter 's own dreams that the type of empire 
of which he was the " head of gold " (ii, 38), for all its 
wealth and splendor, was doomed to eventual failure. It 
looks too as if the king himself, as years and judgments 
came upon him, became more humble and humane, agree- 
ably to Daniel's .counsel (cf. iv, 27). It is notable how 
little the prophets have to say against this king himself ; 
Jeremiah indeed calls him Jehovah's servant (Jer. xliii, 10), 
his denunciations being directed against the realm (cf. Jer. 
li, II, 24, 25). Some searching experience, it would seem, 
as hinted in Daniel's dream after Nebuchadnezzar's death, 
so affected the spirit of the first great empire that from 
being a beast of prey with the wings of a bird of prey 
(lion and eagle) it ''was made to stand upon two feet 
as a man; and a man's heart was given to it" (vii, 4). 
This dream, portraying a realm of which the king is the 
virtual embodiment, may imply the king's recovery from his 
bestial obsession to the upward-looking and humaner mind 
(iv, 34) ; it may connote also deliverance from the bondage 
of degrading superstitions to the influence of a gracious 
personality. One is reminded of Isaiah's prophecy of this 
same realm of Babylon, '' I will make a man more rare 
than gold, even a man than the pure gold of Ophir " 
(Isa. xiii, 12). The king, wdth all the traditions of state 
and religion and learning upon him, must be enlightened 
according to the concepts of his own nature and idiom. 
To have such a genuine man therefore at his court, sharing 
in the realm's life and thought, a personal embodiment of 
integrity and wisdom in a confused and corrupted empire, 
must have been an untold force to open a way out of the 
sloughs of heathenism. And in such wise, according to 
this book, was ordained the career of Daniel, ''whom the 
king, named Belteshazzar," and whom for the wisdom and 
sagacity that was in him he made " master of the magicians, 
enchanters, Chaldeans, and soothsayers" (v, 11, 12). 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

Thus far, however, our study has dealt with Daniel only 

as a personal force and factor whose character was in itself 

How the ^ recourse and revelation. There remains to be 

Book Re- considered the substance and theme of his pro- 
fleets the . . . 
Prophetic phetic disclosure, — for Daniel, we will remem- 

Situation \^qy, is in the revised estimate reckoned not 
among the novelists but among the prophets. And here 
the book, by reason of its composition in the midst of 
later conditions, creates a difficulty. This prophetic dis- 
closure has been so complicated with the apocalyptic ele- 
ments of the second half of the book that readers have 
been too unmindful of its essential identity with the con- 
tinuous movement and ideal of native Hebrew prophecy. 
It has seemed to them like something exotic, outside the 
wonted prophetic channel. This, however, as a brief con- 
sideration will show, is a mistaken notion. 

The prophecy is indeed put in unusual imagery and 
phrase. But the circumstances of its utterance explain this. 
It is prophecy in a new dialect. 

In reality the Book of Daniel merely puts into the form 
suited to its fit audience what the Hebrew prophets are 
already predicting of the progress and triumph of Jehovah's 
campaign among men. The audience is Chaldean and cul- 
tured—versed therefore, as scholars and magi, in the liter- 
ary symbolism of dreams and abstractions. The chief listener 
is imperial and autocratic — apt therefore to think and muse 
not on common matters but on huge enterprises of war and 
dominion. Nebuchadnezzar, his main conquests over, has 
earth and man at his feet ; he is ready now to make his 
realm the exactress (cf. Isa. xiii, 4, margin) and his capi- 
tal the wonder of the world. Already vague dreams are 
gathering head in his brain, to which his imagination and 
his boundless egotism can set no limit. 

To this situation the prophetic disclosure of the book 
corresponds. It begins with the king's forgotten dream in 

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LITERARY FRUITS OF THE EXILE 

chapter ii, as elicited and interpreted by the cooperation of 
Daniel with the God who sent it ; which dream indeed, as 
already remarked, strikes the keynote of the book's mes- 
sage. The dream, under the figure of a great image, is of 
a succession of worldly kingdoms, of which Nebuchad- 
nezzar's is the head ; all members of one great body of 
empire, a thing material, metallic, soulless, which being 
supported only by its basest elements iron and clay — the 
latter having no mingling affinity with the human (ii, 43) — 
is doomed, precious and baser metals together, to be broken 
in pieces by a self-moved stone, cut out of the mountain 
without hands, which thereafter grows to a great mountain, 
or rock, filling the earth. Thus is revealed to the ambitious 
king the type of empire of which he is the head, splendid 
but fatally weak ; and over against it is portrayed, in like 
material terms, the rock-founded kingdom that is destined 
to prevail. *'And in the days of those kings," runs the 
literal exposition, " shall the God of heaven set up a king- 
dom which shall never be destroyed, nor shall the sover- 
eignty thereof be left to another people, but it shall break 
in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall 
stand for ever" (ii, 44). This prophecy makes connection 
with one of the oldest and most familiar Hebrew concep- 
tions of God and His meaning for men. From old time 
He is figured as a Rock, with its connotations of refuge, 
stronghold, reliability (cf . Deut. xxxii, 4 ; 2 Sam. xxii, 2, 3 ; 
Isa. xxviii, 16). Here the Rock is endowed with energy 
and growth, and fitted into the king's dream of material 
empire, as if from a thing inorganic it had become alive. 

Note. From this dream of King Nebuchadnezzar, which he had 
early in his reign, the whole prophetic vein of the Book of Daniel seems 
to have been developed ; the dream of Daniel himself in chapter vii, 
striking into the same theme of the four great monarchies, follows it 
out with change of imagery but with corresponding denouement, and 
the later revelations, viii to xii, concentrate an element of it upon a 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

crisis of history. It is to the interpretation of the king's dream and to 
the distinction that followed, it would seem, that Ezekiel alludes in' his 
taunt addressed to the conceited prince of Tyre (Ezek. xxviii, 3). 

The second dream of King Nebuchadnezzar (iv), being 
personal to the king himself, has little connection, unless 
by contrast, with the Hebrew strain of prophecy ; it shows 
however with remarkable clearness how rudimentary must 
be the spiritual impulsions that could be planted in his 
self-regarding egotism, and how heroic must be the treat- 
ment that could avail to clinch them. Its mixed imagery 
is a step upward from that of the first dream. From con- 
ceptions of inorganic nature it has reached the stratum of 
plant and sentient life, and this is relatively noble. At first 
merely a '' head of gold " (ii, 38), in his dream he is now 
a lofty and conspicuous tree, with its connotations of shade 
and fruit and shelter ; but still his roots are with the beasts 
whose food is the grass of the field. His spiritual tenden- 
cies are not upward but downward toward the brute. To 
the. brute he must accordingly revert for a season, in a 
terrible but remedial chastisement of insanity, that he may 
learn to look upward (iv, 34) and know, for all his pride, 
how insufficient he is to himself. In preparing him for 
this, Daniel urges upon him the first act of mercy and 
humanity associated with him. " Wherefore, O king," 
Daniel is bold to say, " let my counsel be acceptable unto 
thee, and break off thy sins by righteousness, and thine 
iniquities by showing mercy to the poor ; if there may be 
a lengthening of thy tranquillity " (iv, 27). Such a lesson, 
apparently so new to the self-willed king, was no more than 
the ABC of the Hebrew standard of life ; to him it must 
be enforced by calamity. 

Nebuchadnezzar's first dream revealed the eventual rise 
of an all-subduing kingdom, hard and ruthless like a self- 
moved rock ; that was enough prophecy of future conditions 
for his primitive spiritual plane. After his death, however, 

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LITERARY FRUITS OF THE EXILE 

when his successor has taken the kingdom, Daniel has a 
dream of his own (vii), which, striking into the same world 
vision as did Nebuchadnezzar's, makes transition thereby to 
the apocalyptic revelations of the later chapters. This time, 
however, by a change of imagery, the succession of king- 
doms appears under the guise of beasts of prey and rapine, 
whose ferocity increases with each stage of empire until their 
doom comes. The first of these, a lion wdth eagle's wings, 
takes on, as already noted, ^ some human amenities (vii, 4) — 
an allusitDn, perhaps, to the chastened piety, of .Nebuchad- 
nezzar's later life (cf. iv, 34-37). There is no tinge of 
humanity in the succeeding beasts, however; and the fourth, 
a nondescript beast with ten horns, is more strong and cruel 
than the others ; and among the horns there comes up 
"another horn, a little one, . . . and behold, in this horn, 
were eyes like the eyes of a man, and a mouth speaking 
great things " (vii, 8). 

With the coming up of this " little horn," which from 
this time on is the central aversion, the distinctive apoca- 
lyptic strain of the book begins (vii, 9) ; it is as if it were 
the writer's occasion to make transition from legendary 
material to visions more relevant to his own time. What 
this time was, we have indicated. ^ The transition opens 
with a vision of judgment. " I beheld," Daniel relates, 
'' till thrones were placed, and one that was ancient of days 
did sit : . . . the judgment was set, and the books were 
opened" (vii, 9, 10). What next follows belongs as truly 
to the native Hebrew prophecy as to the later apocalypse, 
being indeed merely the repetition and completion of the 
prediction already made to Nebuchadnezzar. The kingdom, 
corresponding to the hard and unfeeling minerals of earth, 
has been prophesied in austere terms ; here, in terms con- 
trasted with the figures of animal ferocity, is prophesied the 
king. '' I saw in the night-visions, and, behold, there came 

1 See above, p. 291. 2 See above, p. 279. 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

with the clouds of heaven one Hke unto a son of man, and 
he came even to the ancient of days, and they brought him 
near before him. And there was given him dominion, and 
glory, and a kingdom, that all the peoples, nations, and 
languages should serve him : his dominion is an everlasting 
dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom that 
which shall not be destroyed" (vii, 13, 14; cf. ii, 44). 
Thus the prophecy of the book culminates in the triumph 
of humanity over brute force and despotism. Nothing that 
comes after makes a revelation beyond this. '' Here," as 
the writer says, "is the e'nd of the matter" (vii, 28). 

Note. This dream of Daniel's in chapter vii is dated " in the first 
year of Belshazzar king of Babylon " ; but as in the author's incorrect 
view Belshazzar was deemed the son of Nebuchadnezzar (cf . v, 1 8), the 
year after the first great monarch's death may be intended, the year in 
which King Jehoiachin was released from prison (cf. 2 Kings xxv, 27). 
I have connected this dream with the first part of the book, partly be- 
cause of its essential parity with Nebuchadnezzar's dream of chapter ii, 
and partly because in the original this chapter continues the Aramaic, 
the language of the previous chapters, in which is embodied what I 
deem the folk source. 

Here then was essential Hebrew prophecy bearing noble 
witness at the capital of the world, before a monarch of 
alien religion and ideals, and in the idiom of his own 
dreams. We can feel its fitness to audience and occasion. 
It would not have done here to speak of Israel's dynastic 
hopes, with a Davidic king at that moment in a Babylonian 
prison ; nor would this world conqueror have been likely to 
understand such a prediction except in terms of havoc and 
conquest. The dream of the coming king does not come 
until Nebuchadnezzar is dead and Jehoiachin is released 
from prison. None the less, however, this, the most dis- 
tinctively Messianic vision of the Book of Daniel, is charged 
with the refined Hebrew spirit and reflects the prophetic 
situation of the time. It is of the same strain, indeed, that 

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LITERARY FRUITS OF THE EXILE 

the Hebrew prophets of this very exile period are expressing, 
in more domestic terms, of their ideaUzed king, David, and 
his restored reign (cf. Jer. xxiii, 5-8 ; xxx, 9 ; Isa. Iv, 3, 4 ; 
Ezek. xxxiv, 23, 24 ; xxxvii, 24, 25 ; Hos. iii, 5). 

Up to the end of chapter vi — that is, of the narrative 
section — the Book of Daniel maintains not unaptly the 
The Eni ma ^.tmosphcre and verisimilitude of the Chaldean 
of the Later court during the exile period. Then follows a 
Revelations ggj-jgg Qf prophetic disclosures, four in all, dated, 
after the manner of Ezekiel,^ at various times from the first 
year of Belshazzar king of Babylon to the third year of 
Cyrus king of Persia (see vii, i ; viii, i ; ix, i ; x, i), and 
made partly through vision and symbol revealed to Daniel, 
partly through literal interpretation and prediction by angelic 
communication. Ever since their publication these disclos- 
ures — if their puzzling character will permit the term — 
have had an extraordinary fascination, owing doubtless to 
their apocalyptic vista with its mystic computations of times 
and epochs, for a certain class of minds, students whose 
literary interest is in cryptic undercurrents of thought and 
emblem and in vague and occult outlooks. The chapters 
have evoked a whole species of apocalyptic and eschatological 
literature, the most notable product being the New Testa- 
ment Revelation of St. John. They have been a feeding- 
ground for ill-balanced speculation in all ages and all 
outstanding crises of history ; even the present world war is 
by no means exempt.^ A bafflement to moderns, they were 
doubtless plain enough to the generation for whom they 
were written ; their enigmatic character, indeed, comes 
largely from their restriction to an episode of history. What 
transcends this Maccabean episode — namely, the broad 
prophetic strain — is not perplexing. 

Let us consider how. this is, and what values remain — 
apocalyptic and other. 

* See above, p. 260. • ^ Written in 1916. 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

The first of. these disclosures (vii), a dream of Daniel's 
reported in the Aramaic, has already been described as a 
kind of transition, repeating under the figure of beasts the 
theme of Nebuchadnezzar's initial dream of the four doomed 
monarchies (ii), and culminating it in the victorious coming 
of '' one like unto a son of man," whose kingdom would be 
universal and .eternal (vii, 13, 14). This event, the most far- 
reaching revelation of the book, coincides with a sublime 
world judgment on the fiercest and loudest of the beasts 
(vii, 9-12); after which ''the kingdom and the dominion, 
and the greatness of the kingdoms under the whole heaven,, 
shall be given to the people of the saints of the Most High" 
(vii, 27). Here would seem to be a more scenic portrayal 
of the vision that Joel saw so many years before (Joel iii, 
12-17), now magnified from the Jewish to the world scale. 
It is of this outcome that the author, rounding off the 
Aramaic portion of the text, says, '' Here is the end of 
the matter." 

The end indeed ; but this presage, as indeed apocalyptic 
premonition in general, is a foreshortened prophecy. It 
deals in comprehensive terms vv^ith a 

far-off divine event, ' 

To which the whole creation moves, 

without heeding the intermediate steps and stages that must 
be surmounted on the way to it, or the checks and evils 
that make against it. And to the author of Daniel, fallen 
on grievous days, these latter are so stern and formidable 
that they obscure the view of the end and endanger his 
people's faith. In other words, a sharp crisis has come 
upon the time, which seems to block all progress toward 
the divine advent ; a crisis which his nation must if pos- 
sible be strengthened to withstand ^nd weather. What this 
is, the increasing definiteness of the disclosures from viii 
to xi, and especially the minute detail of the latter chapter, 

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LITERARY FRUITS OF THE EXILE 

enables us to determine. It is the presumptuous and 
fanatical atterapt of King Antiochus IV (Epiphanes) in his 
reign (175-164 b.c.) to extirpate the Jewish religion and 
enforce Hellenic culture, — an attempt which was carried 
to such lengths as. to abolish the Temple service of sacrifice 
and set up a heathen altar in the sanctuary ("the abomina- 
tion that maketh desolate," xi, 31). 

This predicted crisis is represented as revealed to 
Daniel in Babylon and Susa by visions and angelic com- 
munications. The series of disclosures that lead up to it 
(viii to xii), taking its objective from the ''little horn" of 
Daniel's dream (vii, 8), identifies this grotesque object in 
succeeding descriptions as ''a king of fierce countenance, 
and understanding dark sentences" (viii, 23), and in the 
more circumstantial account of his career (xi) as " the king 
of the north," that is, of Syria. Through the intervening 
period from Daniel to» this king the revelations are made 
in trance imagery, in which the successive kingdoms are 
still represented by beasts (cf. viii, 19-22). Following on 
this, and given in answer to prayer, is a computation of 
the time that shall elapse from Daniel to the profanation 
of the Temple (ix, 24—27) ; which computation (" seventy 
weeks," that is, perhaps of years = 490 years) takes as a 
kind of suggestive unit the seventy years prophesied by 
Jeremiah as the duration of the captivity (ix, 2 ; cf. Jer. xxv, 
II, 12; xxix, 10) and extends its meaning. This compu- 
tation, which, as Professor Driver says, "admits of no ex- 
planation, consistent with history, whatever," constitutes, 
perhaps more than anything else, the enigma of these 
later revelations, and has accordingly given rise to endless 
amounts of assumption and guessing.^ In the rest of the 

1 " Probably no passage of the Old Testament has been the subject of 
so much discussion, or has given rise to so many and such varied inter- 
pretations, as this." — Driver, " The Book of Daniel: with Introduction 
and Notes," p. 143 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

book, chapters x to xii, symbolism is discontinued, and the 
cryptic and mystic language suitable to history in the guise 
of prediction takes its place. This literal portion follows 
history more circumstantially than any other part of the 
book, until the events of about i66 B.C., after which, instead 
of giving to the victories of Judas Maccabeus the credit 
they deserve (cf. xi, 34), its predictions of Antiochus's later 
career and death are vaguer and less verifiable. This fact 
seems significant for the time when the Book of Daniel 
was composed. 

The period of affliction culminates and passes, however, 
and the foreshortened prophecy of the end, which was 
broached as a judgment and a kingdom (vii, 9-14), is 
resumed and completed in terms of personal deliverance 
and resurrection and blessedness (xii, 1-3). Daniel himself, 
the old-time worthy from whose day the legends and premo- 
nitions have come, does not fully understand the meaning 
of his own visions (xii, 4, 9); ''but they that are wise 
shall understand" (xii, 10). 

Our examination of the Book of Daniel has carried us 
far beyond the period of the Chaldean exile, into an en- 
tirely new range and atmosphere of the Biblical literature. 
We must return now to take up other works of that earlier 
age tracing to contemporaries of the Daniel of history. 



Ill 

Second Isaiah : Finisher of the Vision. No attentive 
reader of the Book of Isaiah can pass from the thirty-ninth 
chapter — or even the thirty-fifth where the prophetic strain 
is interrupted by four chapters of narrative — to the fortieth, 
without being at once aware of an entire change of scene 
and tone. It is like suddenly emerging from suspense and 
dimness into a larger and brighter world. The scene, which 

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LITERARY FRUITS OF THE EXILE 

hitherto has been locaUzed to one land's affairs, has become 
as wide as heaven ; and in the sight of God, Who sits 
throned above the circle of the earth, all the nations are 
pictured as nothing and the inhabitants as grasshoppers 
(xl, 17, 22). The time, though not specified, is certainly not 
that of Isaiah the son of Amoz. It reveals an entirely dif- 
ferent set of conditions. There is no trace of such struggle 
with Assyrian peril or diplomatic fatuity or debasing social 
tendencies as plagued that prophet all his life. The tone of 
discourse has changed from austere warning and censure to 
a fervid strain of encouragement and hope, which for the 
most part continues through the rest of the book. This 
whole fortieth chapter reads like the introduction to a new 
book of prophecy. Its opening words, " Comfort ye, com- 
fort ye my people, saith your God," strike the keynote. 
'' Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem ; and cry unto her, 
that her warfare is accomplished, that her iniquity is par- 
doned, that she hath received of Jehovah's hand double 
for all her sins" (xl, i, 2). 

It is on account of this remarkable transition in chap- 
ters xl to Ixvi that modern scholars have deemed them the 
work of a later author, unnamed, whose prophecy has become 
united with that of the great prophet of Hezekiah's time, 
and whom accordingly they distinguish as the Second 
Isaiah, or Deutero-Isaiah.^ This verdict of scholarship, 
assigning the Book of Isaiah to at least two prophets,^ 
opens the question of their relation to each other; to which 
question a variety of answers has been given, according to the 
critics' sense of their vital or merely mechanical connection. 
I have already recorded my view that "the Second Isaiah 
... is an organic sequel and supplement to the First," and 
that accordingly ''the two parts, while set in a different scene 

^ As already noted, p. 167. 

^ A third, or Trito-Isaiah, has by some critics been assumed for chap- 
ters Ivi— Ixvi ; the warrant for this, however, does not seem to me sufficient. 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

and subtending two widely sundered epochs of time, are in 
reality one book, with one homogeneous scheme of thought, 
and with a clear coordination and consecution of elements." ^ 

Note. The consideration of the First Isaiah in connection with the 
events of his time has necessitated a division in our study of the book ; 
and this has been in some ways a disadvantage, as it has tended to 
impair the sense of its unitary trend. The reader should here review 
the sections on "Isaiah of Jerusalem," pp. 167-178, on "The Crisis 
Met and Weathered," pp. 179-185, and on " Isaiah's Vision of Destiny," 
pp. 189-194. Attention is called also (p. 192) to the condensed scheme 
of the book, with its suggested five divisions, or " acts," of which three 
have been considered. The parts yet to come before us are : 

Intermezzo and Shift of Scene, xl 

Act IV. The second onset : the Chaldean experience, xli-lv. 
Act V. Clearing the way for a new universe, Ivi-lxvi. 

As noted above,^ the Book of Isaiah, by a title which 
doubtless was given late, is called " The Vision of Isaiah 
^^ the Son of Amoz." A vision — but one of unique 

Second character ; not like the mystic second-sight of 

saiah Ezekie! or the fantastic dreams of the Book 

of Daniel. It is lucid and literal. Except for the initial 
experience of the touching of the prophet's lips (vi, 7), it 
contains no hint of trance or occult illumination. Rather 
it is like the rational insight of a statesman and sage, who 
has an intuitive sense of spiritual forces and tendencies 
both in his nation and in the world at large, who thinks 
deeply and feels intensely, and whose faith in the divine 
will and word is absolute. In a word, it is the vision which 
comes of sound spiritual illumination. 

Of this vision we have already considered, as compared 
with the presage of other prophets, its broadened horizon 
and its higher plane ^ — -qualities which belong equally to 
all parts of the book, giving it unity of tissue. It remains 

1 See above, pp. 167, 168. 2 See above, pp. 168, 189. 

3 See above, pp. 190, 192. 

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LITERARY FRUITS OF THE EXILE 

to note the large tract of time over which its compass 
extends. It covers virtually the whole range of Isr^eJ's 
prophetic movement, from the early menace of disaster and 
captivity before the fall of the northern kingdom to the 
opening era of adjustment and settledness after the return 
from Chaldean exile — a span of two centuries.^ Thus the 
meaning of the whole field of literary prophecy lies, as it 
were, mapped out before us. 

• A vision has a point or points of view, as well in current 
movements and conditions as in space and time. This is 
what necessitates the assumption of a Second Isaiah. There 
are two widely separated epochs of history, focal points we 
may call them, from which the book's vision opens out. 
These are the epochs connected with the greatest achieve- 
ments of two world conquerors, Sennacherib and Cyrus, 
'and with the relation of Israel to the two great empires 
of Assyria and Babylonia, as these were at the proudest 
stage of their history. 

When the career of Isaiah the son of Amoz ended, the 
vision, though nobly begun, was only half told. Its stage 
of stress and dimness ended with the miraculous rescue of, 
Jerusalem from the Assyrian peril (701 b.c.).^ This event, 
however, far from being a finality, was only the occasion 
of a new birth — the birth, effected not without uncertain 
travail, of that vital and redeeming faith for which the 
prophet had labored (cf. xxvi, 17, 18 ; xxxvii, 3 ; Ixvi, 7-9). 
The spiritual awakening thus symbolized was the earnest, 
the guaranty, of the redemption to come. And here the 
First Isaiah, whose fervid utterances are the soul of the 
vision, had to lay down his work. 

For the second stage of the vision, therefore, its stage 
of triumph and completion, modern criticism recognizes a 
prophet otherwise unknown who, living near the close of 

1 For an outline of this period see above, pp. 133-137. 

2 See above, pp. 184, 185. 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE ^ 

the Chaldean exile, supplemented the earlier work, writing 
just as Cyrus the Persian was well embarked on the career 
of conquest in which he became master of Babylon and 
released the Jewish captives to their ancestral home. The 
occasion was ripe. The people, purified by their ordeal of 
captivity and suffering, were at last ready to be called from 
their long sequestration and girded for their unique mission 
(cf. xl, 27-31). Great events were casting their shadows 
before — signs of terror to the nations, of promise and 
opportunity to the people of Jehovah. So this prophet, 
called for distinction the Second Isaiah, by a masterful inter- 
pretation of these momentous signs and of the agencies by 
which Jehovah's great purpose was. to be wrought, finished 
the vision begun so long before. 

Of the period of spiritual childhood and youth . which 
succeeded to the new birth in Israel — in other words, the' 
„ .. .. educative century that intervened between the 

Continuity J 

with the campaigns of Sennacherib and Nebuchadnezzar 
irst saia — ^j^^ Second Isaiah had no occasion to write. 
He could take the meaning of it for granted, being con- 
cerned rather with the future that was opening so brightly 
before the now adult and redeemed Israel. This accounts 
for the gap of a century and a half that is to be understood 
between the thirty-ninth and the fortieth chapters and for 
the abrupt change in scene and situation of the chapters 
succeeding. It is as if the later writer could ignore the 
annals of this period, as well known, or as not belonging 
to his dramatic purpose. 

Note. This gap is bridged by the history and Hterature that we 
have from other sources. It is the literary product of this intercalary 
period that we have considered, with glances at its historic setting, in 
Chapter V (" After the Reprieve ") and, for the early years of the exile, 
in our study of the Book of Ezekiel. The conditions recognized in the 
Book of Daniel were for the most part those of the reign of King 
Nebuchadnezzar, which ended a little more than a decade before the 
Second Isaiah began his message. 

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LITERARY FRUITS OF THE EXILE 

When as ' supplementer he set himself to complete the 
prophetic vision his work was, in the historic sense, the 
sequel of the whole body of pre-exilic prophecy, which as 
we have seen was considerable. As a literary product, how- 
ever, it is only with the First Isaiah that his work may be 
regarded as continuous ; and indeed its continuity therewith, 
as seems to me, is very marked and palpable. It is the 
continuity of fitting a time of solution to a time of waiting 
and stress. It moves in the atmosphere of light and reali- 
zation, as the earlier prophecy moved through dimness and 
difficulty. To set forth this contrasted situation, however, 
it employs the same scheme of ideas and imagery, traverses 
as it were the same spiritual table-land, as did the earlier 
utterance. Like the First Isaiah, the Second adopts as 
the distinctive title of Jehovah, "the Holy One of Israel." 
Like him he too is dealing not so much with the nation at 
large, with its political and worldly interests, as with the 
inner and vital nucleus, that nobler heart of Israel recog- 
nized in prophetic idiom as '" Zion," or ''the daughter of 
Zion." ^ His opening call to his messenger is, " O thou 
that tellest good tidings to Zion " (xl, 9 ; cf. xli, 27). At 
the outset of the Book of Isaiah the daughter of Zion (quite 
distinct from the "daughters of Zion," iii, 16, 17; iv, 4) 
was figured as lonely and forlorn in a land given over to 
ra'vage and ruin (i, 8), whose citadel was threatened by a 
ruthless invader (x, 32 ; cf. for a later invader, Jer. vi, 23) ; 
as a marriageable maiden, however, whose destiny it was 
to bring forth the Immanuel child who would be mighty 
against the material and destructive forces of the world ^ 
(vii, 14 ; viii, 9, 10). In the latter part of the book, though 
captive, she is addressed as ready to shake off her bonds 
and reign (Hi, i, 2), to receive the reward of salvation 

^ Cf. above, pp. 163, 175. These designations, especially the first, are 
virtually peculiar to the two Isaiahs, occurring but sparingly elsewhere. 
2 See above, p. 176. 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

(Ixii, II, 12), and under a new name to be remarried to 
her land (Ixii, 1-5 ; cf. liv, 5, 6), 

We have seen with what symbohc undertone of imagery 
this nucleal germ of Israel's character, this redeeming 
element, is traced by the First Isaiah from a predicted 
and announced birth (vii, 14 ; ix, 6, 7) through a predicted 
Messianic youth (xi, 1-5) to an eventual Messianic realm 
(xxxii, 1-8), wherein king, princes, and subjects shall be 
at one in a mutual and self- directive government.^ It is a 
development which, permeating like leaven from heart to 
heart, must take time and searching discipline to ripen from 
the individual to the national scale ; and Isaiah the son of 
Amoz had to lay down his vision with the general spiritual 
quickening only just begun.^ It is at this point that the 
curtain falls between the two parts of the Book of Isaiah. 
What stage of realization this Messianic development has 
reached by the time of the Second Isaiah will come up for 
later consideration. In its more literal and present relation 
this nucleal redeeming power in Israel was lodged by the 
First Isaiah with a remnant, very small and feeble in the 
midst of rank wickedness (i, 9), an element whose survival 
and prosperity were put in a term of double meaning, — 
as an eventual return from captivity, as also a spiritual 
conversion from virtual heathenism to a living faith in 
Jehovah (cf. i, 26, 27). Isaiah's whole prophetic conviction, 
symbolized in the name he gave to his eldest son, was 
committed to the proposition, "A remnant shall return" 
(Shear-jashub, vii, 3) ; and the redemption itself is put in 
terms, of justice and righteousness (i, 27) vitalized into 
faith (xxviii, 16, 17). In the Second Isaiah this element 
has ceased, except by retrospect, to figure as a remnant 
(cf. xlvi, 3), because in fact the ruling sentiment, enlightened 
and seasoned by discipline, so coincides with that formerly 
attributed to the remnant that they may be addressed in its 

1 See above, pp. 177, 178. ^ See above, pp. 183, 184. 

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LITERARY FRUITS OF THE EXILE 

terms as a whole ; while redemption, now that Zion's 
''warfare is accomplished" (xl, 2), is announced and 
reiterated as an accomplished fact (xliii, i ; xliv, 22, 23 ; 
xlviii, 20), 

One more feature of continuity may be noted. The 
First Isaiah's most discouraging experience, from the 
moment of his call, was with a people spiritually torpid ; 
his hardest literary task, calling forth his greatest gifts of 
expression, to create in materialized minds a response 
of spiritual discernment and wakefulness. He put this in 
terms of seeing and hearing and intelligent attention (vi, 9, 
10; xxix, 9-12), and the condition he met was touched 
upon as late as the time of Ezekiel (Ezek. xii, 2). In the 
Second Isaiah the people are no longer torpid ; they are 
ready to come forth from their spiritual bondage (cf. xlii, 22), 
and the prophet can say to them, ' ' Hear ye deaf ; and 
look, ye blind, that ye may see " (xlii, 18) ; '' Bring forth the 
blind people that have eyes, and the deaf that have ears " 
(xliii, 8). They have reached the point where their spiritual 
intuitions may be appealed to as awake and alert. " Who 
is there among you," inquires the prophet, "that will give 
ear to this } that will hearken and hear for the time to 
come.?" (xlii, 23.) It was ''the time to come," with its 
duties and destinies, that was now at stake ; and for the 
first time in the essentially continuous Vision it looked as 
if, in preparation for this, the predictions uttered in xxix, 
18, and xxxv, 5, were ready to come true. 

Other such tokens of continuity .might be noted ; these 
are sufficient to show how truly the two parts of the Book 
of Isaiah answer to each other. 

It will contribute much to our appreciation of the Second 
Isaiah if we realize what was the prophet's mood, how he 
felt about his message and its tremendous meanings. To 
an extraordinary degree, as we cannot but note, his utter- 
ance is charged with feeling ; moves,' so to say, under high 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

emotional pressure. The most salient quality of all, perhaps, 
is enthusiasm, exultation, like the enthusiasm of a great 
The discovery. Some event has occurred, some situ- 

Prophet's ation opened, some light dawned on the mystery 
Impulse to of God's will and purpose, which all at once has 
Expression cleared the air and raised a veritable tumult of 
lively realization in the prophet's mind. The sense of this, 
with his immediate impulse to announce and explain, gives 
a kind of headlong quality to his utterance, as if he could 
not stay to reduce it to calm logical sequence but must 
respond to the successive surges of vision and wonder as 
they rise. The plan, accordingly, is hard to analyze to 
ordered sequence ; it is, however, all the more luminous 
to those* who share in his emotion and its grounds. 

Mingled with this dominant strain of enthusiasm are 
other emotional elements, very natural and human, which 
serve to bring the prophet's personality nearer to us. In 
the prevalent confusion and dismay which impending events 
are beginning to cause, he does not repress a certain 
natural pride of superior insight, which leads him to chal- 
lenge the like in all comers (xli, i, 21-24) ^^^ to exult in 
being the first bearer of good tidings (xli, 26, 27 ; xlviii, 
3-8). The reverse of this mood, too, is equally to be 
noted : a caustic disdain, not to say contempt; for the 
spiritual density of the splendid heathenism around him 
(xli, 28, 29 ; xliv, 9-1 1 ; xlv, 20), which disdain vents itself 
in biting satire on images and image-making (xl, 1 8-20 ; 
xliv, 12-20) and on the elaborate inanities of Chaldean 
divination (xlvii, 12-15). Withal, when a certain object 
which we shall later note calls forth his compassion and 
sympathy, he is not untouched by a poignant sense of 
compunction and tender regret (cf. xlii, 19, 20; lii, 14; 
liii, 3, 6). All these emotional moods," however, are but 
varied pulsations in his well-nigh overwhelming sense of 
the vastness and depth of his prophetic theme. He feels 

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LitERARY FRUITS OF THE EXILE 

himself the spokesman of "the everlasting God, Jehovah, the 
Creator of the ends of the earth" (xl, 28 ; cf. xlii, 5 ; xlv, 18), 
who sits throned above the puny race of man (xl, 21-23), 
and whose word, once spoken, shall stand forever (xl, 8). 
He hears the call to open a way for Jehovah through the 
wastes of humanity, not only to Israel's deliverance from 
captivity (that as a kind of by-product, xlv, 13) but to the 
uplift of civilization (xlv, 1-7), to a universal regime of 
salvation (xlix, 6 ; xlv, 22, 23), and so on and on, to the 
finished consummation of new heavens and a new earth 
(Ixv, 17). So great a theme has not been sung before. 
The data for it have been gathering head, but conditions 
were not ready until now. It detaches itself from the pro- 
vincial affairs of a single people or a temporary crisis. It 
does not localize itself clearly to place, whether Chaldea or 
Jerusalem, nor does it set times and seasons. It is in fact 
the sublime culmination of Old Testament prophecy. What 
comes after in this strain is only prophecy's gradual subsi- 
dence. And it is the prophet's impassioned impulse to set 
his message forth as good news, ''good tidings to Zion," 
that has earned for him the title generally accorded to 
him, of ''the evangelical prophet." 

Note. The phrase " to bring good tidings," which is the keynote of 
the Second Isaiah (see xl, 9 ; xli, 27; lii, 7 ; Ixi, i), is translated in Greek 
by evayyekLO-aaOaL, which is the origin of our word " to evangelize." 
The term was adopted from Second Isaiah by the New Testament 
writers and applied to the proclamation of the things of Christ (cf. Luke 
i, 19; ii, 10; viii, i ; Rom., x, 15). The noun cmyye'Aiov, "evangel," is 
in very frequent New Testament usage to designate the tidings of 
Christ; and the English translation Gospel— ^' good spell," or ''good 
news " — is its exact equivalent. It is thus the Second Isaiah (though he 
may have adopted it from the earlier prophet Nahum, Nah. i, 15) who 
originates the term for the distinctive New Testament body of truth. 

What is it that has called forth this enthusiasm, this 
lively sense of pardon and fulfillment, on the prophet's part .? 
The impassioned surge of his announcement blends the 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

details of his good news together, but a little straight atten- 
tion resolves his discourse into three main lines of theme. 

First, to them "that wait for Jehovah" (cf. xl, 31), he 

announces and explains the approach of the liberator. This 

announcement follows immediately after the for- 

I. The -^ 

Liberator ticth chapter, in which, as we have noted, he 
on his Way j^^]^gg j^jig change of scene and introduces, as it 
w^ere, his dramatis oersonae. He calls the outlying lands 
(of course it is Jehovah who speaks) to a solemn conference 
(xli, i), to tell them what is taking place by Jehovah's ex- 
press purpose and aopointment. ''Who hath raised up one 
from the east," he exclaims, '' whom He calleth in righteous- 
ness to his foot ? - - . I, Jehovah, the first, and with the 
last, I am he " (xli. 2, 4). This personage, not named until 
the third mention of him, is first described as a resistless 
conqueror (xli, 2, 3), then as one '' that calleth upon my 
name" (xli, 25), and finally, after his name is given, as 
Jehovah's ''shepherd" (xliv, 28), "anointed" (xlv, i), and 
"he whom Jehovah loveth " (xlviii, 14). He is one of the 
acknowledged great ones of antiquity, Cyrus, conqueror of 
Babylon and founder of the Medo-Persian empire ; whose 
mission it is, in the large, to introduce a more liberal order 
of things (cf. xlv, 1-7) and, as related to Israel, to release 
the exiles to their homes and decree the rebuilding of Jeru- 
salem (xliv, 28 ; xlv, 13). With his approach, so ordained 
and facilitated by Jehovah, the prophet has the sense of a 
world-wide divine event." He has heard "the voice of one 
that crieth, ' Prepare ve in the wilderness the way of Jeho- 
vah ' " (xl, 3-5), — a wilderness far vaster than the Syrian 
desert through which the captives are to return (cf. xliii, 
19-21), the straightened and leveled way of which is for 
Cyrus as well as for Israel (xlv, 2, 13 ; xlviii, 15). In other 
words, the prophet's presage is of a better civilization as 
well as of a holier religion, of a freer access for all the 
world to the truth and health of life (xlv, 22, 23). 

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LITERARY FRUITS OF THE EXILE 

Note. With the coming of Cyrus, who was of Aryan race, to world 
dominion, the helm of empire passed from Semitic hands to Aryan, 
and in subsequent dynasties, through the Greeks and Romans, was per- 
petuated in the same race. For a comparison of the Aryan genius for 
mental and poli.tical achievements with the Semitic genius for moral 
and spiritual ideas, see the remarks quoted from Professor McCurdy, 
page 35, note. 

The prophet's description of Cyrus's mission was doubt- 
less made comparatively early in the latter's career of con- 
quest, some time before he drew near to Babylon. As the 
conqueror advances on his way the prophet draws a realistic 
picture of the dismay caused in province after province at 
his approach, and the fatuous efforts of the inhabitants to 
save themselves by repairing their idols (xli, 5-7). These 
idols, indeed, of which the lands are full, never fail to call 
out his keen satire ; though his contempt is not so much 
for them as for the besotted minds of men who can make 
them with their own hands and then worship them as if 
they could avail anything (xl, 18-20 ; xliv, 12-20). He does 
not spare even the most distinguished of the Chaldean deities 
(xlvi, I, 2) nor the occult learning and culture which is the 
pride of this highly civilized land (xlvii, 12—15). His dis- 
dain, in fact, is for the muddy mind that has been molded 
by idol service (xli, 29 ; xliv, 9 ; xlv, 20). Over against 
such a mind, which has no insight, he sets the mind 
molded to the mind of Jehovah ; which indeed he feels his 
own to be, — glorying, not without a certain egotistic pride, 
in being the first to interpret the signs of the times (xli, 
26—28), and challenging his heathen neighbors to show a 
like discernment, whether of good or evil (xli, 21-24). 
This personal touch — with which he connects his sarcastic 
onslaught on heathen culture (cf. xli, 28, 29) — is eminently 
human and natural. It is, as we have noted, a kind of 
overflow of his prophetic enthusiasm, as the tremendous 
meanings of coming events crowd upon his consciousness. 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

The event which is causing such dismay to the outlying 

nations, however, and such dull confusion to idol-besotted 

-^ „ ,, minds has no essential terrors for the exiled 
2. The Call 

to be Wit- people of Israel. Rather, it is their long pur- 
nesses posed and ripened opportunity. When, in his 

opening chapter, he first looks in upon them,, he sees them 
sequestered, unheeded, deeming themselves forgotten of 
Jehovah (xl, 27). But no, he says, it is not in Him who 
numbers the stars to faint from his purpose, or to fail those 
who have waited for Him (xl, 26-31). Their true mission 
is before them. ''They that wait for Jehovah," he says, 
" shall renew their strength ; they shall mount up with 
wings as eagles ; they shall run, and not be weary ; they 
shall walk, and not faint." He is calling to duty a people 
grown to new life and vigor — a great contrast to the froward 
nation with whom the First Isaiah labored. 

Then, when he has broached the call and function of the 
coming conqueror and satirized the scurrying alarm caused 
among the other nations (xli, 1-7), he turns to his people 
to announce the part that Israel is to play as a factor in 
the great world movement. Addressing them in the singu- 
lar, as a unit, with endearing names that go back to their 
very beginnings (xli, 8, 9), he speaks hope and courage to 
them : '' Fear thou not, for I am with thee ; be not dis- 
mayed, for I am thy God ; I will strengthen thee ; yea, I 
will help thee ; yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand 
of my righteousness " (vs. 10). The ultimate function that 
he ascribes to them, though an astonishing one, is in the 
straight line of what has been prophesied before. '' Behold," 
he reports Jehovah's words, '' I have made thee to be a 
new sharp threshing instrument having teeth ; thou shalt 
thresh the mountains and beat them small, and shalt make 
the hills as chaff. Thou shalt winnow them, and the .wind 
shall carry them away, and the whirlwind shall scatter them ; 
and thou shalt rejoice in Jehovah, thou shalt glory in the 

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LITERARY FRUITS OF THE EXILE 

Holy One of Israel" (vss. 15, 16). This refers to an 
elemental sifting and separating process which from the 
beginning of the movement had been before the eyes of 
prophecy. A century and a half before, Micah, foreseeing 
this day (cf. Mic. iv, 10), had said, "Arise and thresh, 
O daughter of Zion " (Mic. iv, 13); not much later Isaiah 
had exclaimed of Babylon, " O thou my threshing, and the 
grain of my floor ! That which I have heard from Jehovah 
of hosts, the God of Israel, have I declared unto you" 
(Isa. xxi, 10) ; and Jeremiah, prophesying a similar destruc- 
tive mission for Israel (Jer. li, 20-24), ^^^ made Babylon 
" like a threshing-floor at the time when it is trodden " 
(Jer. li, 33). These prophecies can refer of course only to 
'a far-reaching spiritual action which the image of threshing 
and winnowing fitly typifies ; their implication is not political 
or militaristic but elemental. 

When, however, the prophet's description comes to what 
the people of Israel are specifically to do or be in bringing 
about this tremendous result, his trenchant metaphors yield 
place to literal terms of quite other implication. He sum- 
mons them to be true to their superior enlightenment as 
Jehovah's witnesses (xliii, 8-13); in other words, to stand 
as discerners of His truth and representatives of His re- 
deeming and saving power. To this end it is that, having 
overcome the assaults and allurements of heathenism, they 
are facing this w^orld crisis of the coming of Cyrus. Having 
their part in the movement, they have nothing to fear. 
They, who alone of all the nations can be addressed as 
" the blind people that have eyes, and the deaf that have 
ears " (xliii, 8), are called from their durance (cf. xlii, 22) 
to be, in a profound sense, the conscience, the moral dy- 
namic, of the coming world. ^ Witnesses of other gods and 
cults, too, are challenged to show a similar insight ; but 
none can interpret past or future, or fathom the reality of 

1 Cf. above, p. 137. 
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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

things (xli, 28 ; xliii, 9; xliv, 9). This situation it is which, 
making the prophet so enthusiastic over the light vouch- 
safed to Israel, rouses such disdain of the elaborate but 
futile learning of Babylon (xliv, 25 ; xlviii, 12-15) and the 
muddled mind of the idol devotee (xlvi, 20). 

Such, then, is the mission of Israel as a community of 
men consciously redeemed and enlightened, — a community 
by whose character the world may ' identify the will and 
word of Jehovah. An essential condition of this mission 
is liberation from Chaldean bondage and home reconstruc- 
tion ; and for this, in its material and political sense, Cyrus 
is the divinely ordained factor. 

It is not the material and political sense, however, that the 
prophet has first in mind. Their liberation, and by conse- 
quence their witnessing, is spiritual. Cyrus's clemency is its 
sign, but its essence is of their own redemption and free will. 
This is connoted, I think, in the prophet's twice-uttered 
exhortation to his people to *'go forth" from Babylon (xlviii, 
20-22 ; Hi, II, 12). To two classes of people he urges this 
exhortation, classes whom perhaps we may roughly distin- 
guish as the more worldly minded and the more spiritually 
minded. It is not until chapter xlviii that he differen- 
tiates, and then he addresses himself to '' the house of 
Jacob, . . . who swear by the name of Jehovah, and make 
mention of the God of Israel, but not in truth, nor in right- 
eousness." These he admonishes as men who, availing 
themselves of the Jehovah name and distinction, are not 
fully refined of false alloy (xlviii, 10) and so have not 
won to the peace of the Hebrew hope (vss. 17-19). To 
them, as to the faithful, the opportunity is open to go forth 
from Chaldean corruptions into the purer satisfactions of 
life; but coupled with this exhortation is the austere warn- 
ing, '' There is no peace, saith Jehovah, to the wicked " 
(xlviii, 20-22; cf. Ivii, 21 ; Jer. li, 6). Quite different is 
the tone of his exhortation to the distinctive Israel of the 

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LITERARY FRUITS OF THE EXILE 

redemption (perhaps identical with the First Isaiah's '* rem- 
nant " who would return). They are to depart in clean and 
seemly order, bearing the vessels of Jehovah, and with the 
calm deliberateness of inherent freedom and courage (lii, 
II, 12). With these, and not with the double-minded, is 
the witnessing that issues in freedom and peace. 

When through his prophet spokesman Jehovah first calls 
the captive people of Israel to be a factor in his world cam- 
paign, his designation of them is, " my servant," 

3. " Behold . , f. , ., ... T 

my Servant — ^ title 01 trust and responsibility repeated 

whom I many times and with marked emphasis (xli, 8, Q ; 

Uphold" ... ^ .... .. ^ ^ T- -J V 

xlii, 19; xliii, 10; xliv, I, 2, 21). Evidently 

meant to be a term of unique distinction, it always names 

the people in the singular number, seeming thus to connote 

their solidarity as one common will called to administer the 

purpose of Jehovah. Israel as a community made fit by 

experience is the servant of Jehovah, the agency of His 

world design. To this end the community is repeatedly 

reminded of the redemption and forgiveness to which it 

has won (cf. xliv, 21—23), and encouraged to "fear not"; 

as if it were to commit itself intrepidly to some new and 

untried adventure in life and to hazard victory thereby. 

But what is this adventure ? The Servant of Jehovah — 
what is the specific nature and method of his service ? 

The passages wherein Israel as a nation or community 
is directly addressed do not answer this question very clearly. 
They are full of enthusiasm and assurance, but they do not 
reduce the adventure to definite action. For this we must 
look to another class of passages — a notable series wherein 
the Servant is described in the third person, or wherein 
he speaks for himself. In these he appears as a personage, 
with traits and experiences not communal but individual. 
Described — or describing himself — as one known to all 
without being named, he is so presented that these distinc- 
tive traits and experiences are brought to light for Israel to 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

cherish or pity or emulate. It is as if this person, whoever 
he is, were introduced as the Uving embodiment, if they will 
receive it so, of the people's highest -and deepest service, 
standing thus as their supreme type and representative before 
Jehovah and the world. So in an ideal solidarity of community 
and person, both are alike called the Servant of Jehovah. 

Note. The Recognitio7i of the Sei'vant. It will help to a clearer 
identification of this Servant of Jehovah if we take care to distinguish 
the traits that are brought to light according as he is spoken to, spoken 
of, or himself speaks. They come out so distinctively that we cannot 
regard this grammatical alternation of first, second, and third persons 
as fortuitous. 

1 . When spoken to, as he is in the first instance (xli, 8), the Servant 
is identified with the Israelite community ; is bidden not to fear the on- 
slaughts of conquerors or the upheavals of history, because the people 
itself has a conquering mission, as a divinely created instrument to 
thresh and winnow the world (xli, 14-16). Again he is identified with 
the people of Israel as Jehovah's one true and enlightened witness in 
the midst of idol cults (xliii, 10); and later he is addressed as a nation 
formed from the womb for the light and leading of the nations (xliv, 1-5). 
This communal function is epitomized in xliv, 21-23. 

2. It is when the Servant is spoken of that the most mysterious 
traits of his character are given ; as if Jehovah were describing one 
who only dimly realized how much his personality and mission meant. 
First he appears as the patient, unobtrusive, sympathetic, persistent 
one who is destined to make justice and spiritual emancipation prevail 
(xlii, I -9) : then as one blind and deaf, as if just emerging from gloom 
to a dazzling light (xlii, 19-21), in which description "the blind people 
that have eyes and the deaf that have ears " also are summoned to their 
mission (xliii, 8-13). Next he is described as one whose visage was 
marred by suffering and who was destined to startle nations as he had 
astonished men (Hi, 13-15); and finally, as one who, though despised 
and rejected, gave his life to save others, and in patient silence bore 
their sins and made intercession (liii, 12). Yet in that sacrifice lies his 
victory (liii, 11, 12). 

3. In three passages the Servant of Jehovah speaks for himself. 
First, in a solemn proclamation he accepts the mission to which he was 
born (xlix, 1-7): but instead of conceiving his function as that of a 
threshing instrument (cf. xli, i 5) he identifies himself with Israel (vs. 3) 
as a finely tempered weapon for Jehovah's service (vs. 2 ; cf. xi, 4), and 

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LITERARY FRUITS OF THE EXILE 

recognizes that his mission is not merely to restore '' the preserved of 
Israel " but to give light and salvation to the whole world (vs. 6). 
Second, he represents himself as one scholarly and eloquent,, who for 
the sake of his beneficent work submits to shame and indignity yet 
holds himself firmly and confidently to his purpose (1, 4-9), and calls 
for emulators of the same faith and zeal (vss. 10, 11). Finally, he defines 
as his own aim (not separable from that of his people), that for which 
he was anointed, the ideal character and mission first laid down for the 
Servant of Jehovah (Ixi, 1-3 ; cf. xlii, 5-9). It is this last noted mission 
that Jesus takes up and appropriates as his own in the synagogue at 
Nazareth, his home town (Luke iv, 16-21). 

Thus the prophet bids his people contemplate one in 
whom the highest ideals of personality are portrayed, as 
embodied or at least adumbrated in the idealized experience 
of Israel. And the prophecy is that this type of- personal 
worth, even by its gentleness and sympathy and self- 
effacement, is destined to prevail. An estranging, almost 
incredible ideal for its pre-Christian time (cf. liii, i), yet it 
is one which in the New Testament era became real and 
normal. It is the idealized portrayal of the Messianic per- 
sonality, human yet imbued with the divine spirit, which is 
the redeeming health and adultness of manhood. 

For this masterly portrayal we owe much to the prophet's 
creative sense, but not all. It does not read like a pure 
The Personal invention or abstraction ; it calls its readers to 
Original behold an individualized character. And yet what 
personal model can history furnish to answer to it.? 

The developed Christian thought has so identified this 
portrayal, especially in the fifty-third chapter, with the per- 
son of Jesus Christ (cf., for example. Acts viii, 30-35), whose 
earthly ministry came more than five and a half centuries 
later, that Biblical students are disposed either to ignore the 
question whether such a personage ever existed, or to merge 
the qualities here given in those of the ideaHzed community 
of Israel. This rather arbitrary judgment, however, leaves 
too much of the problem unsolved. 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

One person there was, qualified by dignity and station, 
to merit the title '' Servant " in common with the people 
of Israel. That person was their king. We- will remember 
that when in 597 B.C. the flower of the Jewish court and 
realm was surrendered into captivity (2 Kings xxiv, 12-15), 
their king Jehoiachin went with them, and for thirty-seven 
years — equal to a whole generation — was a state prisoner 
in Babylon, sequestered from his subjects, as they from the 
affairs of the world. King and people were in like case, 
though his was much the harder lot. During that time 
they, so far as government was concerned, were left, except 
for their enforced exile, to their own way (cf. liii, 6), mind- 
less of him ; and he — well, ' ' who shall declare his 
generation ? " We will recall what occurred at the end of 
that time. He was released from his imprisonment and 
treated with honor and clemency all the rest of his life. 
W^e do not know how long he lived, for there is no record 
of his death ; but if this prophecy of the Second Isaiah 
was written, as it seems to have been, early in Cyrus's 
career of conquest. King Jehoiachin, if still living, would be 
about seventy years old. 

Note. Tke N'arrative of Jehoiachin'' s Release. " And it came to 
pass in the seven and thirtieth year of the captivity of Jehoiachin king 
of Judah, in the twelfth month, on the seven and twentieth day of the 
month, that Evil-Merodach king of Babylon, in the year that he 
began to reign, did lift up the head of Jehoiachin king of Judah out of 
prison; and he spake kindly unto him, and set 'his throne above the 
throne of the kings that were with him in Babylon, and changed his 
prison garments. And Jehoiachin did eat bread before him continually 
all the days of his life ; and for his allowance there was a continual 
allowance given him of the king, every day a portion, all the days of 
his life " (2 Kings xxv, 27-3Q = Jer. Hi, 31-34). 

^Many descriptions and allusions throughout the Second 
Isaiah seem to turn on this strange experience of surrender 
and imprisonment and release. It is viewed as the wonder- 
ful paradox of the captivity. In illustration of this we may 

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LITERARY FRUITS OF THE EXILE 

note first what the Servant himself reports from Jehovah 
as he reahzes how tremendous is his mission (xhx, 5-7). 
'' Thus saith Jehovah, the Redeemer of Israel, and his 
Holy One, to him whom man despiseth, to him whom the 
nation abhorreth, to a servant of rulers : ' Kings shall see 
and arise ; princes, and they shall worship ; because of 
Jehovah that is faithful, even the Holy One of Israel, w^ho 
hath chosen thee'" (vs. 7). Thus, with incidental mention 
of the rejection and ignominy noted later in the prophet's 
retrospect (liii, 3, 4 ; cf. Jer. xxii, 28), is given the Servant's 
personal assurance of the homage, also mentioned later, 
which will come to him, the wondering sense of a king- 
liness beyond that of kings, when the motive and meaning 
of his sufferings become known (Hi, 13-15). All this, 
though highly idealized, seems to recognize an experience 
similar to, not to say identical with, that of King Jehoiachin. 
We have spoken above of the prophet's tone of wonder- 
ing enthusiasm, like the enthusiasm of a great discovery. ^ 
We can almost specify the moment when, like a sudden 
surge of insight, that discovery with its tremendous vista 
of prophetic vision dawned upon his mind. It was the 
moment of the king's release, when, dazed and dulled and 
with visage marred (lii, 14), he came forth from the gloom 
and silence of his dungeon. To the prophet this was like 
an unwittingly acted parable, with its direct parallel and 
appeal to the people. '' Hear, ye deaf," he says, "and look, 
ye blind, that ye may see " (xlii, 1 8). Then, as if describing the 
object they are to see, follows this singular passage : " Who 
is blind, but my servant } or deaf, as my messenger that I 
send .? who is blind as he that is at peace' with me,^ and 

1 See above, p. 308. 

2 In the first edition of his commentary ,on Isaiah (" The Prophecies of 
Isaiah," Vol. I, p. 260), without following up its connotation, Professor 
Cheyne translates this clause, '' Who is blind as the surrendered one ? " 
A very significant rendering if the prophet had King Jehoiachin in mind ; 
a very vague and enigmatic one otherwise. 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

blind as Jehovah's servant ? Thou seest many things, but 
thou observest not ; his ears are open, but he heareth not " 
(vss. 19, 20).^ This, with the succeeding verse, sounds as 
if meant for an individual case ; but turning then to men- 
tion the people at large as in a similar state of spiritual 
duress (vss. 22-25), and to hearten them with the assurance 
of redemption (xliii, 1-7), he calls on them to '' bring forth 
the blind people that have eyes, and the deaf that have 
ears " (vs. 8), that they in like access of vision may become 
Jehovah's witnesses, thereby qualifying as His Servant 
(vs. 10). It is as if the prophet were calling attention to 
the one singular phenomenon of prison release which 
contained the most pregnant lesson of their emancipation 
and mission. 

Not the eventual release alone, however, — the long 
ordeal itself, too, after the Servant ' ' was taken from prison 
and judgment " ^ (liii, 8), yields rich store of revelations, 
partly as reported by the prophet, partly as overheard from 
the Servant himself. The most familiar of these, and for 
its time the most estranging, is that contained in the fifty- 
third chapter. Here in a vivid retrospect (cf. lii, 14) the 
prophet, with pity and compunction, — for he too was at 
one with the nation in misunderstanding and rejecting 
(cf. vss. 2, 3), — reflects how all this suffering with its patient 
silence was undergone as just bearing his people's sins, and 
that while like sheep they had gone their own willful ways 
he, led like a lamb to the slaughter, was their unheeded 
sacrifice. Nor was this in vain, for survival and success 
are predicted of it. ''He shall see of the travail of his 
soul, and shall be satisfied. . . . Therefore will I divide him 

^ Macaulay, in a remark in his Essay on Milton, has noted a similar 
phenomenon to this. " When a prisoner first leaves his cell," he writes, 
" he cannot bear the light of day ; he is unable to discriminate colors, or 
recognize faces." 

^ I quote here the translation of the Authorized Version, as being both 
more correct and more lucid than that of the Revised. 

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LITERARY FRUITS OF THE EXILE 

a portion with the great, and he shall divide the spoil with 
the strong" (vss. ii, 12). The long results of that silent 
expiation will earn the Servant a name among the mighty 
of the earth, a victory which hitherto the world had only 
military terms to describe. Such is the prophet's awe-stricken 
discovery as he reflects on the experience of him whose 
first emergence from duress so astonished many. 

In his report and interpretation of this expiatory ordeal, 
the prophet has revealed much, but not all. When we note 
what Jehovah Himself says to the personal Servant, and 
overhear the latter 's response thereto, we get an added 
idea of the true inwardness of that strange surrender to 
duress and death. It was not blind, except as faith is blind. 
It was not weak. It was indeed not surrender at all, except 
to the ascertained will and word of God. Thq prison expe- 
rience, with its cruelties and indignities, was transmuted 
into a sturdy avowal of loyalty and faith. '' I gave my back 
to the smiters," the Servant says, ''and my cheeks to them 
that plucked off the hair ; I hid not my face from shame 
and spitting" (1, 6). Yet instead of letting this engender 
resentment and rancor, he set his face like a flint against 
the shame (vs. 7) and listened as scholars do for Jehovah's 
word, that he himself might give comforting words to the 
weary and oppressed (vss. 4, 5). Of the ultimate rightness 
of this attitude he is so sure that he challenges any to 
gainsay him (vss. 8-10). This corresponds remarkably with 
Jehovah's first characterization of "my Sen^ant whom I 
uphold " (xlii, 1-4) and with the commission that was then 
laid upon the latter : " I, Jehovah, have called thee in right- 
eousness, and will hold thy hand, and will keep thee, and 
give thee for a covenant of the people, for a light of the 
Gentiles," — to which commission were added these remark- 
able words : "to open the blind eyes, to bring out the 
prisoner from the dungeon, and them that sit in darkness 
out of the prison-house " (vss. 6, 7). The Servant himself 

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recalls this latter feature of his commission in his large 
realization of it (xlix, 9) ; and later, in his summary of what 
he is anointed to do, a prominent element is "to proclaim 
liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to 
them that are bound" (Ixi, 1-3). All this is, to say the 
least, full of suggestion. The insistent reference to prison 
and release seems to recognize an individual experience 
which of course can be attributed to only one person, the 
royal prisoner Jehoiachin. Whether it is he whom the 
prophet has idealized into the personal Servant of Jehovah 
and thereby made the pattern and type of the communal 
Servant is left for the candid student to judge for himself. 
I have given the data. 

In thus portraying the fortunes of this mysterious Servant 
the prophet has done more than rescue a royal personage 
from despite and rejection. He has rescued the Hebrew 
history itself. Taking the event which Israel deemed the 
most calamitous in its annals — namely the seeming igno- 
minious surrender of the king and the flower of his realm 
to Babylon — he has through the faith of this personage 
given it motive and power, nay, has revealed it as a tre- 
mendous spiritual adventure such as the world had never 
dreamed of (cf. lii, 15 ; Hab. i, 5). It is, in truth, a stoop- 
ing in order to conquer, an integral part of the paradoxical 
campaign waged by the Spirit of Jehovah. From the very 
start the king was despised and rejected of men. Even his 
historians misjudged him, calling his reign — of which the 
sole event was the surrender — an evil one (2 Kings xxiv, 9 
= 2 Chron. xxxvi, 9). His contemporary Jeremiah, who at 
a later date advised his people to imitate the surrender, 
was puzzled and doubtful over his exile (Jer. xxii, 28-30). 
Ezekiel speaks of him tenderly indeed, but only in the 
vagueness of parable (Ezek. xvii, 22-24). The purpose and 
power of the surrender, in fact, could come to light only 
after the release, when the king came forth as from burial 

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LITERARY FRUITS OF THE EXILE 

to life. Here come in these wonderful accounts of the 
Servant, who accepted the leading of the divine Spirit 
(1, 5), confirmed an inflexible conviction that his course 
was right (vss. 7-9), and exerted his powers in sympathy 
and comfort (vs. 4 ; xlii, 3, 4). He himself was learning to 
walk by sheer blind faith rather than by sight, — as the 
prophet puts it, ''Who is blind but my servant" (xlii, 18) ? 
And the spirit of this learner and sufferer is commended 
to the surrendered nation as the pattern and type of its 
communal mission. Thus a new historic force was intro- 
duced to a darkened and brutal civilization, a force greater 
than man or man-made devices can wield, whose gentle yet 
mighty working, biding its time of germination and leaven- 
ing influence, emerged at length full-orbed in the person 
and ministry of Christ. Here we see it as it were in 
embryo, in adumbration, discovered and illumined by the 
rapt insight of an* enthusiastic prophet. It is essentially the 
sense of this gentle yet all-potent Messianic force, which 
he has felt even in surrender and prison, and of its fit- 
ness to become the spiritual dynamic of a redeemed people, 
which so crowds the prophet's words with the joy of " good 
tidings to Zion." He has seen it rise in the secluded expe- 
rience of a kingly personality to steadfast faith and sympathy 
and helpfulness and sacrifice, and in the spiritual force of 
that personality he sees the promise and power of salvation 
for all mankind. 

But this spiritual force must have its personal and com- 
munal agencies to administer and impart it to the darkened 
and needy nations of mankind. It cannot be left to the 
individual goodness and influence of a personage just re- 
leased from prison, kingly though he is and honored by his 
captors. That is why the prophet seeks so zealously to induce 
his people, in a solidarity of faith and loyalty, to make their 
king's noble aim their own. Only so are they in their turn 
to be the real Servant of Jehovah, ministering His world 

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purpose. Accordingly, as soon as he has portrayed the 
sacrificial devotion of the personal Servant (liii), with a re- 
newed call to faith and courage (liv) he sets before them, as 
the other prophets of the captivity have done, a new cove- 
nant with Jehovah (cf. Jer. xxxi, 31-34 ; Ezek. xxxvii, 26), 
connecting it, as did they with David (cf. Jer. xxiii, 5-8 ; 
XXX, 9 ; Ezek. xxxiv, 23, 24 ; xxxvii, 24). *' I will make 
an everlasting covenant with you," he reports from Jehovah, 
" even the sure mercies of David. Behold, I have given 
him for a witness to the peoples, a leader and commander 
to the peoples " (Iv, 3, 4). Thus the prophets of the cap- 
tivity are in agreement as to the ideal destiny of Israel. 
There is this momentous advance, however, to be noted of 
the Second Isaiah, that this Davidic leadership is to be not 
merely of the Jewish nation but universal (Iv, 4 ; cf. xlix, 6), 
and it is to be not merely a receiving of light and blessing 
on their part, as if they could have the il^onopoly of Jeho- 
vah's favor, but a giving out also, an impartation ; in other 
words, they are to be a witnessing and missionary people. 
" Behold," the prophecy continues, '*thou shalt call a nation 
that thou knowest not ; and a nation that knew not thee 
shall run unto thee, because of Jehovah thy God, and for 
the Holy One of Israel ; for he hath glorified thee " (Iv, 5). 
Thus with a glowing rhapsody of privilege and duty and 
promise, whose main inspiration is the discovery and identi- 
fication of the Servant of Jehovah, this section of the Book 
of Isaiah (xl-lv) closes. 

With chapter Ivi a new section, or ''act," opens, the last 
of the five into which the Book of Isaiah naturally falls ; 
which section I have ventured to entitle " Clearing the Way 
for a New Universe." ^ That it is a new section is evident 
from the change of style and subject. From rhapsody and 
unconditioned promise the transition is abruptly to warning 

1 See above, pp. 192, 302. 
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LITERARY FRUITS OF THE EXILE 

and austere counsel. Thus the prophecy goes on for four 
chapters (Ivi-hx) before the strain of encouragement and 
propitious outlook, on the larger and as it were cosmic 
scale, is resumed. It is as if the prophet, before he could 
round out his immense theme, must needs go back and, 
picking up some essential elements hitherto omitted or ig- 
nored, fit them into his comprehensive scope of treatment. 
Such, to my mind, is in effect the significance of the group 
of chapters that opens the final section. 

To make clear the relation of this part of Isaiah to the 

rest, let us look a little more closely than we have done 

into the religious and secular situation of the 

Fitting the . ° 

Word to exiles to whom the prophecy is addressed. It 

Israel at ^[\i \^q remembered that not a little homo2:e- 
Large 

neous group but a whole diversified nation are 

captive here in Babylon, and that a class of them has 
already been admonished (xlviii) for their lack of sincerity 
and integrity. 

When in chapter xl the prophet finds Israel a sequestered 
people deeming themselves forgotten of Jehovah, and en- 
courages them to wait for the sure fulfillment of His word 
(xl, 27-31), he proceeds to associate the "good tidings" he 
is bringing them with " Zion" and "Jerusalem" (xl, 9), the 
sacred spots of the homeland. These are not local terms, 
however ; they are terms used in prophetic phrase to designate 
that choice element of the nation whose hearts are still in the 
homeland and whose religious zeal and enthusiasm may be 
counted on to carry them back when the release comes. These 
correspond to what the First Isaiah called " the remnant," 
now grown in numbers and matured faith until the typical 
Israel can be measured by their spiritual standard. In all 
the chapters from xl to Iv, except xlviii, this type character, 
the character of a people purged from the virus of idolatry, 
is taken for granted, and the glowing assurance of forgive- 
ness and redemption and peace is meant for such. But 

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. GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

still the earlier prophecy holds true that it is the remnant 
that shall return ; and the tone of chapter xlviii indicates 
that a considerable portion of the people does not come up 
to the pure standard imputed in the body of the prophecy. 
These must not be left out of the account. Nor must they 
be segregated as if they were outsiders. The redemption 
of Israel is not granted as a favoritism. The same freedom 
of return, of " going forth from Babylon " (xlviii, 20), is 
held out to them as to others ; the same boon of peace ; 
but *' there is no peace, saith Jehovah, to the wicked" 
(vs. 22) is the sternly coupled warning.^ So the prophet 
holds the coming high destiny of Israel open to all ; for the 
time is past to differentiate between the "good and bad 
figs," as did Jeremiah (Jer. xxiv), or between the remnant 
and the majority, as did the First Isaiah, or between the 
kingdoms of Judah and Israel, as Ezekiel still had to do, 
though confident of their eventual reunion (Ezek. xxxvii, 
15-23). He is not minded to discriminate, though chapter 
xlviii reveals a class still in need of warning and correction. 
For all there is a Zion and a holy city to which in spirit 
they may return. In other words, while the prophet's glow- 
ing descriptions of the new order connote an audience in 
like intense mood, they are meant equally for Israel at large, 
''whether they will hear or whe.ther they will forbear" 
(cf. Ezek, iii, 11), and whose religious emotions, though per- 
haps just as genuine, are not pitched in so high a key. It 
is in this closing section of the book, I think, that the 
prophet has in mind the needs of this more secular or lay 
class. Accordingly he leaves rhapsody and writes in the 
more sober and didactic style. Whether this part of the book 
was written before the end of the exile or after, and whether 
in Babylon or in Palestine, does not definitely appear ; the 
only indication of time is the complaint in Ixiv, 10,11 (cf . 
Ixiii, 18, 19), that Jerusalem is still a desolation and the 

1 See above, p. 314. 

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LITERARY FRUITS OF THE EXILE 

Temple in ruins. Some critics liave conjectured for its 
authorship a Trito- Isaiah, but, as I think, without sufficient 
warrant. My impression is that the released king Jehoia- 
chin, standing behind the prophet as a kind of silent partner 
and still functioning as the anointed king, may have had 
much to do with the sane and as it were legislative counsels 
therein given ; this seems borne out by the interpolated 
Servant passage, Ixi, 1-3, in which, echoing xlii, 6, 7, the 
Servant states what he is anointed to do. 

The '' Israel at large " to whom these chapters are ad- 
dressed may be regarded as the general lay element of the 
people wherever they are in the world. The time had come 
for them to enter upon their destiny as a cosmopolitan 
people. One sees this from the outcome of the Chaldean 
exile. As a matter of history the First Isaiah's prophecy 
that a remnant should return came literally to pass. It was, 
after all, only a remnant, only a comparatively small minority, 
that recolonized the land of Palestine. The great majority, 
having for two generations ^ found homes and interests 
elsewhere, remained as it were citizens of the world, while 
still genuine patriots of the typical Zion and Jerusalem 
(cf . xlviii, 2), — an* ideal of loyalty which, in spite of historic 
vicissitudes, the race has maintained to this day. So from 
the exile onward the Biblical literature, dealing with Israel 
at large, must reckon with the Israel of the synagogue as 
of the Temple, with the Jews of the dispersion and of the 
capital alike. 

" He that taketh refuge in me shall possess the land, and 
shall inherit my holy mountain. And he will say, 'Cast ye 
up, cast ye up, prepare the way, take up the stumbling-block 
out of the way of my people.' For thus saith the high and 
lofty One that inhabiteth eternity, whose name is Holy : 

1 So reckoned from the prophetic notation of the 'period as seventy 
years (see Jer. xxv, ii, 12 ; Dan. ix, 2), which is put in a round rather than 
a historic number. 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

I dwell in the high and holy place, with him also that is 
of a contrite and humble spirit, to revive the spirit of the 

humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite" 
Tendencies (Ivii, 13-15; cf. Ixii, lo). Such may be deemed 
^^ ^®. the keynote of these searching chapters. There 

are stumbling-blocks to be removed from the 
character and career of Israel at large : vestiges of an in- 
veterate proclivity to idolatry and servility (Ivii, 3-10; Ixv, 
3-7); tendencies ominous of a hard and heartless disposition 
(Ivi, 9-lvii, 2); which, if not corrected by the tender spirit 
of humility and sympathy, will work mischief. In his plea 
for tolerance and welcome toward foreigners (Ivi, 1-8) the 
prophet hints not obscurely at the race pride and exclusive- 
ness which in later times became too strong a trait of the 
restored nation ; his prophetic caution against such narrow- 
ness is the opening of Israel's most sacred doors to all : 
" My house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples " 
(Ivi, 7). The two forms of religious cultus that he recog- 
nizes, namely, observance of the Sabbath (Ivi, 2 ; Iviii, 13, 14) 
and fasting (Iviii, 1-9), are merely those to which Israel, 
deprived of temple, was reduced in exile ; and they are 
interpreted with remarkable inwardness,* as embodying all 
that the true man needs in maintaining spiritual relations 
with God and fellow man. The spirit of Christianity lies 
involved in these simple customs, sincerely and unselfishly 
observed. In sum, these four chapters, Ivi to lix, seem to 
embody the prophet's desire to train Israel's traits and 
tendencies out of perverseness to that vital redemption 
and covenant (lix, 20, 21) which shall make them a people 
not only righteous and conscientious but so gracious and 
tolerant that their religion shall be an attraction to the 
nations that need it. He has detected the tendencies to 
clannishness and race pride, to self-righteousness and exclu- 
siveness, which if not checked will make against this. If 
they are to be dispersed in the earth, their witnessing for 

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LITERARY FRUITS OF THE EXILE 

Jehovah must be not only an enlightening power, it must 
also be an art — the art of living with others. To this end the 
stumbling-blocks must be removed from the way, that their 
character may be lovable as well as admirable. If in subse- 
quent history the Jewish people have neglected to cultivate 
the power of being beloved, it is, as these chapters show, 
not for lack of warning. 

With the sixtieth chapter the prophet's strain of rhap- 
sody and enthusiasm, which the chapters of admonition 
The Vision interrupted, is resumed and kept up in a kind 
Finished: of climax, to the end of the book. But with a 
mation and difference. The fortieth and succeeding chapters 
Retrospect called Israel forth from their long waiting to 
deliverance and opportunity. The captive people are to learn 
the way of the Servant of Jehovah, and submit themselves 
in faith to its gentle and kindly but in the end prevailing 
influence. It is in effect the beginning of communal life on 
a new and unheard-of plan, with the assured return to Zion 
as its guaranty and occasion. In the sixtieth and succeed- 
ing chapters we have the thrill and enthusiasm of the grand 
culmination ; wherein at the end of her long ordeal Israel 
is apostrophized as so established in the restored home, and 
so truly the light and leading of the world, as to be the 
center of attraction and reverent joy to all peoples. " For, 
behold, darkness shall cover the earth," the prophecy begins, 
''and gross darkness the peoples; but Jehovah will arise 
upon thee, and his glory shall be seen upon thee. And 
nations shall come to thy light, and kings to the brightness 
of thy rising " (Ix, 2, 3). 

This is not to be read as a Utopian rhapsody, though 
indeed its outlook goes over from the national to the uni- 
versal. It is merely the jubilant finish of the vision which 
was outlined as the theme of the book at the beginning of 
the First Isaiah (ii, 2, 4 ; cf. Mic. iv, 1-3), and which, on 
lines later clarified in Christ and Christianity, is still in 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

process of coming to pass. We may indeed call it Isaiah's 
sublime presage of the Christian sway and power in the 
coming times, as his conception of the Servant of Jehovah 
is his presage of the personal Christ. The person and the 
era are correlative. We must, to be sure, say of it as the 
people said of Ezekiel's presage,. '' The vision that he seeth 
is for many days to come, and he prophesieth of times that 
are far off " (Ezek. xii, 27) ; but the elements, the spiritual 
principles, are all brought to light in the course of the 
prophecy, and it is evidently the purpose of these ensuing 
chapters to pass them in summary and review. 

Let us briefly run over some of these elements. 

' ' Who are these that fly as a cloud, and as the doves 
to their windows" (Ix, S) ? In such visualizing terms the 
prophet depicts the eager throngs who will some day press 
onwards, not only from the dispersed sons of Israel but 
from the lands of those who despised and wronged them, 
to a holy central place which, under the name '' The city 
of Jehovah, the Zion of the Holy One of Israel" (Ix, 14), 
is conceived as at once a sanctuary, a city, and a common- 
wealth. It is not the place, however, as a civic or religious 
capital that the prophet has mainly in mind, nor its restored 
wealth and prosperity ; rather it is the regenerated people 
and the spirit of good will and beneficence that animates 
them. In other words, he translates the new life of Israel, 
according to his consistent ideal, into terms not political or 
commercial but spiritual and essentially Messianic. "Thou 
shalt call thy walls Salvation and thy gates Praise " (Ix, 18). 
Three chapters (Ix-lxii) are devoted to this phase of his 
subject ; in which by various hints of recapitulation he brings 
previous strains of prophecy to bear. We cannot recount 
these all here. There is, for instance, the lately broached 
idea of their making themselves loved. ''Whereas thou 
hast been forsaken and hated, so that no man passed 
through thee, I will make thee an eternal excellency, a joy 

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LITERARY FRUITS OF THE EXILE 

of many generations" (Ix, 15). Then the personal Servant 
of Jehovah speaks once more, in terms that can only be 
applied to their idealized king, to repeat the charge that 
Jehovah, by his anointing, has laid upon him to fulfill : 
preaching good tidings to all who are needy and heavy-laden 
(Ixi, 1-3 ; cf. xlii, 5-7) ; the well-known passage which in 
later days our Lord Jesus took up and applied to his own 
mission (Luke iv, 17-19). In a following passage, by the 
bestowal of new names upon people and land, the reproach 
of adulterous unfaithfulness, which from the time of Hosea 
and the First Isaiah (cf. i, 21 ; Ivii, 3-10) all the prophets 
have fastened upon Israel's idolatrous proclivities, is gra- 
ciously taken away, and the land is recognized as remarried 
to Jehovah and to her youthful sons (Ixii, 4, 5). Once more, 
too, the prophet exhorts his people, as he has admonished 
the doubtful ones, to clear the way and gather out the ob- 
structions, that the salvation of the holy people may have 
free course (Ixii, 10-12) ; an exhortation which, by its charge 
to "lift the ensign for the peoples," puts upon the people 
themselves the mission attributed by the First Isaiah to the 
Messianic scion of Jesse (xi, 10, 12), and by the Second 
Isaiah connected with the personal Servant* of Jehovah 
(xlix, 22). In short, this finished vision contemplates the 
restored nation as in effect a Messianic people. ''And they 
shall call them, ' The holy people,' ' The redeemed of Jeho- 
vah ' : and thou shalt be called, ' Sought out, ' ' A city not 
forsaken'". (Ixii, 12). Such is the idealized destiny of Israel. 
In chapters Ixiii and Ixiv the prophet, by way of summing 
up the deep, significance of the now culminating prophetic 
Th Pr ta - movement, first introduces upon the scene the 
nist and His supreme Protagonist Jehovah Himself recounting 
ampaign p^-^ gQ^j^-^j-y campaign, and then by a natural tran- 
sition voices the contrite people's penitent response thereto. 
The passage Ixiii, 1-6, wherein Jehovah speaks, merits full 
quotation here for its dramatic sublimity. 



GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

The Prophet 

Who is this that cometh from Edom, 
With crimsoned garments from Bozrah ? 
This that is glorious in his apparel, 
Marching in the greatness of his strength ? 

Jehovah 
I that speak in righteousness, mighty to save. 

The Prophet 

Wherefore art thou red in thine apparel, 

And thy garments like him that treadeth in the winevat? 

Jehovah 

I have trodden the winepress alone ; 

And of the peoples there was no man with me : 

Yea, I trod them in mine anger. 

And trampled them in my wrath ; 

And their lifeblood is sprinkled upon my garments, 

And I have stained all my raiment. 

For the day of vengeance was in my heart, 

And the year of my redeemed is come. 

And I looked, and there was none to help ; 

And I wondered that there was none to uphold ; 

Therefore mine own arm brought salvation unto me; 

And my wrath, it upheld me. 

And I trod down the peoples in mine anger, 

And made them drunk in my wrath. 

And I poured out their lifeblood on the earth. 

It will be noted that in the Scripture idea vengeance, 
like the motive of this destructive campaign, is regarded 
as the sole prerogative of Jehovah (cf. Deut. xxxii, 35 ; 
Rom. xii, 19),. and that it is represented as taken in the 
prosecution of "' his work, his strange work," that he may 
''bring to pass his act, his strange act" (Isa. xxviii, 21). 
Such may be called the paradox of Isaiah's vision. While 
Jehovah is represented as doing His severe and searching 
work alone, because He finds none wise or just enough to 

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LITERARY FRUITS OF THE EXILE 

do it for Him (cf. xli, 28 ; lix, 1 5-17), to His chosen agencies 
— Israel, Cyrus, the Servant — are prescribed constructive 
and restorative work, as befits the proper relations of man 
with man. The passage above quoted answers in an appar- 
ently intended way to a passage in the First Isaiah where 
Jehovah announces that He *' hath a sacrifice in Bozrah, and 
a great slaughter in the land of Edom" (see xxxiv, 5-15). 
We have seen how, by all the prophets, Edom is especially 
denounced, and always for its unbrotherly hatred and treach- 
ery} So, in its deep implication, this answering pair of 
passages seems to describe Jehovah's radical vengeance 
against the unbrotherliness of man and man, of which 
wickedness Edom is the speaking type. 

Immediately after this sanguinary scene, however, the 
prophet, returning to Israel, says, " I will make mention 
of the loving-kindnesses of Jehovah," and in a wonderful 
contrast brings God near to the heart of man. " In all 
their affliction," he says, "' he was afflicted, and the angel 
of his presence saved them ; in his love and in his pity he 
redeemed them, and he bare them, and carried them all 
the days of old " (Ixiii, 9 ; cf. xlvi, 3, 4). The thought of 
this human tenderness of God rouses the answering thought 
of Israel's lack of response thereto. They have treated His 
spirit in such a way that He must fight against them 
(Ixiii, 10) ; and so, offering a prayer in the name of his 
people, the prophet makes confession of their sins and 
ungratefulness, addressing Jehovah, apparently for the first 
time in a people's prayer, as Father (Ixiii, 16 ; Ixiv, 8, 9), 
though earlier prophets have revealed that intimate relation 
(i, 2; cf. Jer. iii, 4, 19; xxxi, 9). With this humble con- 
fession, he urges before Jehovah a plea for the holy city 
and Temple, which are still in ruins (Ixiii, 17-19; Ixiv, 
10-12), — an indication that this part of Isaiah may be 
dated near the end of the exile or early in the return. 

1 See above, pp. 21 5,' 272, notes. 
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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

In the closing two chapters, Ixv and Ixvi, the prophet 
reaches the apocalyptic height of his message, in the proph- 
The Purposed ^^y ^^ ^^^ " f ar-off divine event" to which all this 
and Clarified redemptive struggle and development has tended, 
ssue — nothing less than the creation of new heavens 

and a new earth, so much more glorious than the present and 
former things that these will be forgotten (Ixv, 17, 18; Ixvi, 
22, 33). The glorious outlook and its conditions are portrayed 
with his characteristic enthusiasm. The prospect, however, is 
not an unclouded glory. There are still elements that make 
sadly against an era of universal felicity and peace. While 
Jehovah is inquired of by those that asked not for Him 
(Ixv, i), yet there are those of His own people still rebellious, 
their minds still darkened with the corrupt customs of idolatry 
(Ixv, 2-7), men that ''prepare a table for Fortune, and that 
fill lip mingled wine unto Destiny," instead of honoring the 
living God of Israel. His mention of these seems a rever- 
sion to the inert and indifferent class to whom chapters xlviii 
and Ivi to lix are addressed. Yet still He will not leave 
them out of the purpose of mercy. "Thus saith Jehovah," 
he says, "As the new wine is found in the cluster, and one 
sdith, 'Destroy it not, for a blessing is in it,' so will I do 
for my servants' sake, that I may not destroy them all" 
(Ixv, 8). Not their idolatry, alone, but the vain pride that 
is engendered by such fashionable culture, is what incurs 
the disgust of Jehovah. His contempt is poured out on the 
men that say, " Stand by thyself, come not near to me, for 
I am holier than thou. These are a smoke in my nose," 
He says, "a fire that burneth all the day" (Ixv, 5). To 
men of this disposition, whose unholy foreign culture has 
made them self-inflated and exclusive, the prophet addresses 
a final warning and discrimination. It is they who in the 
glad new. order will be spiritually starved and forlorn, while 
Jehovah's true servants, called by another name, shall rejoice 
in the God of truth and grace (Ixv, 13-16). 

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LITERARY FRUITS OF THE EXILE 

Note. It is worthy of remark that while in chapters xl to Iv the 
prophet has uniformly addressed Israel in the singular number as Jeho- 
vah's servant,^ he here drops that term of solidarity and discriminates 
within the nation itself between servants and outsiders. Only twice 
before has this plural designation been used, once of the native Israel 
(liv, 1 7), and once of converted foreigners becoming servants (Ivi, 6) and 
so sharing the blessings of the " house of prayer for all peoples " (Ivi, 7). 

Like Ezekiel before him this prophet of the Second Isaiah 
is looking forward to a Temple rebuilt from ruins, but with 
a vastly enlarged ideal and with a more inward concept of 
what the restoration shall mean. To Ezekiel it meant a 
regained land and a reorganized ecclesiastical service ; his 
ideals and plans were essentially priestly (Ezek. xl-xlviii). 
To the Second Isaiah it meant a worship befitting '' new 
heavens and a new earth," a regime so much more spacious 
and generous that the narrow old order no more would 
come to mind (Ixv, 17), and so much more intimate that no 
thought of ritual is raised. "Thus saith Jehovah, Heaven 
is my throne, and the earth is my footstool : what manner 
of house will ye build unto me ? and what place shall be 
my rest ? For all these things hath my hand made, and so 
all these things came to be, saith Jehovah ; but to this man 
will I look, even to him that is poor and of a contrite spirit, 
and that trembleth at my w^ord " (Ixvi, i, 2 ; cf. Ivii, 15). 

These words we may take as the sublime summing-up of 
a prophecy which, setting out with comfort to a redeemed 
and purified people (xl, i, 2), encourages them to rise from 
their long ordeal of exile and avail themselves of the coming 
of Cyrus to start anew in a recolonized land, a rebuilt Jeru- 
salem, and a newly founded Temple (xliv, 26-28). Here 
then is adumbrated the Temple that it is their mission to 
found : as spacious as the universe, as deep laid as the 
regenerate heart of man. In reading this description one 
thinks of the prayer of Solomon at the dedication of the 

1 See above, p. 315. 
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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

first Temple, and of the wonderful spiritual experience that 
the nation has traversed since then. ''But will God in very 
deed dwell with men on the earth ? behold, heaven and 
the heaven of heavens cannot contain thee ; how much 
less this house that I have builded ! " (i Kings viii, 27 = 
2 Chron. vi, 18). The older relations with Jehovah are 
indeed to return ; but clarified, enlarged, made inward and 
universal in the loyal spirit of the Servant of Jehovah. 

To the prophet, by way of retrospect, all this traces back 
to a wonderful spiritual birth wherein a whole nation, as it 
were in a day and after a difficult gestation, is brought 
to a strange new life (Ixvi, 7-9). What specific event, or 
events, the prophet had in mind we will not undertake to 
say ; we recall, however, the mystic birth of the Immanuel 
child foretold by the First Isaiah and the actual birth an- 
nounced, ^ which we have regarded as symbolizing the uprise 
of a vital regenerating power in the saving remnant ; we 
recall how little growth that power seems to have made 
when the crisis approached (xxvi, 17-19); how despairing 
King Hezekiah felt when it actually came because '* the 
children are come to the birth, and there is not strength to 
bring forth" (xxxvii, 3).^ Yet in spite of this difficult travail 
— perhaps in consequence of its miraculous deliverance from 
the Assyrian peril — the nation seems to have leaped to a 
faith and stamina which survived a century both of persecu- 
tions and of corrupting lures, growing all the while ; until 
at length the Second Isaiah could in fervid terms assure 
them' that they were redeemed and ready for a work wherein 
the nation could prevail in the world as the agency of divine 
enlightenment and salvation. Some epoch, it would seem, 
the prophet had in mind, when the nation was born to all 
this. Was it near the time when Isaiah the son of Amoz, 
after his long, thankless work, laid down his unfinished 
vision, leaving it ready, after suitable growth and ripening 

1 See above, pp. 176, 177. ^ gee above, pp. 182-184. 

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LITERARY FRUITS OF THE EXILE 

had intervened, to be taken up and completed by the later 
prophet whom we call the Second Isaiah ? I am not re- 
luctant to think so. On such line of spiritual birth and 
development as this recognizes, the Vision of Isaiah, be- 
cause it is a vision rising beyond the local and temporal 
into eternal values, is unitary and homogeneous. The whole 
prophetic landscape is there. 

Note. With this study of the Second Isaiah, the culmination of 
Old Testament prophecy, we close our consideration of the literary 
activities in Chaldea (see above, p. 257). One more work remaining, 
one of the greatest indeed of all, namely, the Book of Job, which is 
closely akin in spirit to the Servant of Jehovah in Isaiah, is reserved 
for consideration in a later connection, it being in fact the great classic 
of the completed canon ; see below, pp 463 ft. 

II. The Literature of Reestablishment in the 

Holy Land 

We have seen how fruitful a seed plot the Chaldea of the 
exile proved, under the constructive faith of such men as 
Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Second Isaiah, for the production 
of that forward-looking literature which we associate with 
these names. In the material sense that literature was a 
preparation for the return from exile to the ancestral home, 
from bondage to freedom. In a spiritual sense it was far 
more momentous ; for it was an indispensable step toward 
inspiring Israel to be a saving missionary light and power in 
the world. For this the return was a necessary prerequisite. 
"It is too light a thing," Jehovah had said to the Servant, 
"that thou shouldest be my servant to raise up the tribes 
of Jacob, and to restore the preserved of Israel : I will also 
give thee for a light to the Gentiles, that thou mayest be 
my salvation unto the end of the earth " (Isa. xlix, 6). It 
was for this great object that the Jewish people's two 
generations of hidden experience in a land of splendid but 
sterile religion, during which time they became as it were 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

immune to the idolatrous disease germ which had so long 
infected them, was the divinely ordained provision. 

For the literary activity that rose out of the experiences 
of the regained homeland, the situation and impulsion were 
Back to ^^^y different. From a life of relative comfort 
Hardship and and prosperity in the richest land of the earth 
isi usion ^i^g returned exiles must for many trying years 
enter the life and bear the hardships of virtual settlers 
and pioneers. For the Holy Land to which they so joy- 
fully returned, having lain so long waste, was reverting to 
primitive conditions, and Jerusalem was filled with the 
chaos and rubbish of ruin. 

When in 538 b.c. the edict of Cyrus came, permitting 
all who were so minded to return to Jerusalem and rebuild 
there the House of Jehovah (Ezra i, 2, 3 = 2 Chron. xxxvi, 
23), a caravan numbering nearly fifty thousand, of all 
classes needed for reorganization (Ezra ii, 64), set out from 
Chaldea for the eight-hundred-mile journey homeward. The 
company, only a relatively small proportion of the Jewish 
people at large, was made up mostly of the younger and 
more energetic element, born in Chaldea, men who could 
bear the perils of the way and the toils of resettlement ; 
men too of stanch and sterling faith who, responding to 
the enthusiastic summons of the Second Isaiah, had con- 
secrated themselves to bear the vessels of Jehovah, back to 
their ancient repository in Jerusalem. The undertaking, as 
had been promised, was auspicious. '' For," the prophet 
had assured them, ''ye shall not go out in haste, neither 
shall ye go by flight : for Jehovah will go before you ; and- 
the God of Israel will be your rearward" (Isa. lii, 11, 12). 
And it was turning out even so. Monarch and people, 
natives and kinsfolk, joined in friendly and helpful ways 
to speed the journey. 

As this book is concerned with the literature of the times, 
we must needs pass over the details of the history that 

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IJTERARY FRUITS OF THE EXILE 

here supervenes,^ except as mention of it is necessary as 
a setting for the literature which the age produced. In 
538 B.C., soon after their arrival at Jerusalem, the returned 
exiles made it their first duty to clear away the debris and 
erect the altar of burnt offering on the conjectured site of 
the former one (Ezra iii, i, 2). It was not until 520 B.C., 
however, eighteen years later, that they took hold in down- 
right earnest to build the Temple, and not until four years 
more, just seventy years after the destruction of the first 
one, that the Second Temple, destined to be the cultural 
center of Judaism until the time of Herod the Great (37 b.c. 
to A.D. 4), was dedicated (Ezra vi, 15, 16), The main reason 
of this delay it is not hard to guess. The people's zeal was 
chilled by disillusion. Setting out in the fervor of a large 
but foreshortened prophetic vision, they had not counted 
on the seeming shrinkage that is sure to come when an 
object of idealized imagination becomes an object of con- 
crete sense perception. Yet to deal with such shrinkage — 
keeping the ideal strong and sound at the core of the real 
— was the essential discipline on which the emancipated 
people of Israel was now unwittingly embarked. It was a 
foretaste of the kind of experience that on a more developed 
scale a later generation encountered when Jesus came to 
challenge their recognizing faith. ^ They had doubtless fed 
their awakened hopes on some such good fortune as Isaiah 
had portrayed in his sixtieth chapter, with visions of eager 
nations flocking to their light and bringing both pious hom- 
age and material prosperity. What they actually found was a 
demolished Temple, a ruined capital, a desolated countryside, 
a life of stern toil and poverty. It was a situation fitted to 
test their spiritual stamina and loyalty. The genuineness of 
their inner life, that stratum deeper than enthusiasm and 

1 For a very interesting account of all this later Jewish history see 
Hunter, " After the Exile," Edinburgh, 1890. 

2 See below, P- 53I• 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

immediate interest, was at stake. One is reminded of the 
truth expressed in a stanza of Matthew Arnold's : 

We cannot kindle when we will 

The fire which in the breast resides. 

The spirit bloweth and is still, 

In mystery our soul abides. 

But tasks in hours of insight will'd 

Can be through hours of gloom fulfill'd.^ 

It is with such a national situation as this that the final 
voice of Old Testament prophecy, the cadence as it were 
of the prophetic strain, drawing in from the far vision to 
the pressing emergency, must deal. 



Prophets of the Rebuilt Temple. ''What manner of 
house will ye build unto me.?" Jehovah had said through 
the Second Isaiah, "and what place shall be my rest" 
(Isa. Ixvi, i) ? The question carried with it the implication 
running through all the thought of the great prophet, that 
henceforth the only temple that could satisfy Israel's wor- 
ship must be as large- as heaven and earth, and that their 
religious life must be sincerely adjusted to the ideal of a 
world's salvation. Only so could they be true witnesses for 
Jehovah (cf. Isa. xliii, 12 ; xlv, 22). But here in their re- 
gained home they had fallen on "the day of small things " 
(Zech. iv, 10); their superficial dream was disillusioned ; so 
they had allowed their prophetic fervor to lapse. And with 
this lapse there had crept in moral evils which the pro- 
phetic spirit, concerned as it was with the claims of a re- 
deemed life, could not suffer to go unreproved. So, before 
its function was over, prophecy must gird itself for one more 
appeal. It was a home appeal this time, .though still its far 
horizon was world-wide. 

1 Arnold, " Morality." 

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LITERARY FRUITS OF THE EXILE 

Two prophets, Haggai and Zechariah, beginning their 
activity in the same year, — namely, the second year of the 
Persian king Darius I (520 B.C.), — addressed themselves to 
the needs of the situation. Their plea, following rather the 
lines of Ezekiel than of the Second Isaiah, as, indeed, the 
times demanded, was for the rebuilding of the Temple, 
that it might become the religious and cultural center which 
it was meant to be. Both prophets were of the company 
returned from Chaldea ; their work may properly be reckoned, 
therefore, among the literary fruits of the exile. 

The reader of the Book of Haggai will miss all seeming 
care on his part for graces of style or elaboration of treat- 
Haggai: ment ; will meet with no striking imagery or 
Bearing a fervid prophetic vision. On the other hand, he 
Urgent and will find what is more to the purpose in hand. 
Immediate ^ lucid directness and incisiveness aimed straight 
at a practical object and counting on practical and concrete 
effect. His aim wras single, urgent, immediate : to rouse 
the conscience of rulers and people to the work of building 
the Temple. That was what they were sent home from 
Babylon to do. On it depended their national idea and 
perpetuity, their power and influence in the w^orld. The 
response to his appeal, which was prompt and hearty, 
showed how true a heart still beat in the bosom of the 
chosen people. " No prophet," says Dr. Marcus Dods, 
"ever appeared at a more critical juncture in the history of 
the people, and, it may be added, no prophet was more suc- 
cessful." In less than a month after he received his word 
from Jehovah he had the rulers and the people at work. 

In all Haggai's prophecy there is no hint of what had 
so long been a staple -of prophetic censure, namely, the 
insidious blight of idolatry. The people here in the home- 
land were well purged of that inveterate obsession. Their 
ordeal of exile, now so happily over, had left them sincerely 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

and exclusively loyal to their fathers' God Jehovah. And 
this meant much ; it was their return, after long discipline, 
to the old ways (cf. Hag. ii, 5 ; Jer. vi, 16). But with this 
emancipation secured, and with unpropitious conditions trying 
their faith, new tendencies to evil were creeping in, which 
the keen sense of prophecy must expose and deal with. 
For one thing, their God and His service were not yet a 
thing confirmed and supreme. They were postponing His 
claims to their own convenience. /' This people say, ' The 
time is not come for Jehovah's house to be built ' " (i, 2), 
was the word of Jehovah to the prophet, which he in turn 
reported to the governor and the high priest, now the 
nation's leaders. They had indeed their excuse, in the lean 
harvests and hard conditions of living (i, 6). But not the 
people alone, or mainly, were at fault. The leaders them- 
selves, the men of means and influence, were more cul- 
pably so. '* Is it a time for you yourselves to dwell in your 
ceiled houses, while this house lieth waste .? " (i, 4) was the 
prophet's trenchant question. Here was the beginning of 
mischief. It has been suggested that they had used the 
material gathered for the Temple to build and adorn their 
own houses. Not unlikely. So the prophet's repeated 
warning is, " Consider your ways " (i, 5, 7). They had 
reversed the relations of things, - — had made untoward con- 
ditions a pretext instead of a warning and lesson. "Ye 
looked for much, and, lo, it came to little ; and when ye 
brought it home, I did blow upon it. Why ? saith Jehovah 
of hosts. Because of my house that lieth waste, while ye run 
every man to his own house " (i, 9). It was a conscience- 
awakening word, revealing the fact that poor and rich alike 
were not for necessity but for mere self-indulgence putting 
off the claims of God and duty. And this could not be 
allowed to vitiate the wholeness and genuineness of their 
new-found faith. The unselfish spirit of their prophetic 
mission was at stake. 

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LITERARY FRUITS OF THE EXILE 

As soon as the response to Haggai's appeal came, so 
prompt and practical, the prophet's tone changed to encour- 
Gieams of agement and promise. The reassurance was in 
the Larger truth necessary and timely. The reconstructed 
" ^ Temple itself, on which such glowing hopes had 

been founded, must survive the shrinkage of the real from the 
ideal. It seemed, as soon as they got at work, an insignifi-. 
cant affair as compared with the venerable Solomonic one, 
which some of the older people remembered (ii, 3 ; cf . Ezra 
iii, 12). *'Yet now be strong," was the prophet's heartening 
word, ireiterated to one and all (ii, 4) ; and went on to predict 
that the promise of Isaiah Ix, 4—9, w^ould come true of it, 
and that the latter glory of the house would be greater 
than the former, ''and in this place will I give peace, saith 
Jehovah of hosts" (ii, 9). 

Haggai's prophecy, as has been said of all this closing 
strain of prophecy,^ has drawn in from the large horizon 
of the Second Isaiah to the present emergency ; and yet 
he adds to it an apocalyptic touch, which leaves the pros- 
pect open, as it were, for the larger and limitless view, in 
his prediction that Jehovah is soon to " shake the heavens, 
and the earth, and the sea, and the dry land " (ii, 6), so 
that the precious things of all nations shall come to enhance 
the glory of Jehovah's house. Like all apocalyptics the pre- 
diction is a foreshortened vision, and his idea of the inter- 
mediate steps thereto is vague, not to say in some ways 
erroneous. He couples with it, for instance, a promise to 
Zerubbabel the governor, who is the grandson of Jehoiachin, 
that Jehovah will make him a signet as His chosen one 
(ii, 23); a promise which, seeming to imply the resumption 
of the Davidic dynasty, conflicts with the emphatic proph- 
ecy uttered by Jeremiah at the time of the surrender (see 
Jer. xxii, 24, 30). As a matter of history, Zerubbabel was 
succeeded by civic governors of other nations, while the real 

1 See above, p. 340. 
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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

headship of Israel passed into the hands of the high priest. 
For the Davidic Shepherd and Anointed One (Messiah) 
Israel must await the fullness of the time (cf. Gal. iv, 4), 
and that was far beyond Haggai's horizon. 

The promise of a glorified Temple connotes a law and 
a Temple service to correspond. Haggai cannot well clinch 
his prophecy without an intimation of this, which like his 
other utterances strikes close home. In two searching 
questions to the priests he reverts to that lurking evil of 
covetous self-indulgence which has brought on Jehovah's 
monitory infliction of hard times (ii, 10-19). Frorfi their 
answers he deduces the lesson that while the bearing of 
holy things does not purify by physical contact, uncleanness 
does spread an evil taint. So it has been hitherto ; hence 
this widespread want and scarcity. The Temple service that 
shall bring the blessing must be unalloyed and pure, and 
for this, from the very foundation of the house, the promised 
glory must wait. '' Is the seed yet in the barn } yea, the vine, 
and the fig-tree, and the pomegranate, and the olive-tree have 
not brought forth ; from this day will I bless you " (ii, 19). 

Thus with heartening assurance of success on the one 
side and a thinly veiled hint of moral taint and drawback 
on the other, Haggai's downright message justifies its far- 
reaching motive and principle. 

In the middle of Haggai's work, a few weeks after he 
had predicted the shaking of the nations and the filling of 

Jehovah's house with wealth and glory (ii, 6-9), 
Adding New another prophet, Zechariah, began a series of 
Visions of prophetic utterances, the revelations for which 

were grouped under three dated occasions (see 
i, I ; i, 7 ; vii, i), the last being in the fourth year of 
King Darius, namely, 518 b.c, two years before the com- 
pleted edifice was dedicated. His activity was thus con- 
temporary with that of Haggai, beginning two months after 

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LITERARY FRUITS OF THE EXILE 

work on the Temple at the urgency of the latter was 
resumed (of. Hag. i, 15), and continuing two years after 
Haggai's. His prophecies, uttered while the builders were 
zealously at work, did not need to press that phase of the 
issue ; accordingly, taking it for granted, he dealt with the 
renovated and organized period that would follow, a matter 
which he brought out in increasing clearness as the work 
went on. 

Thus by wise and timely team work these two postexilic 
prophets, supplementing each other, led the momentous 
enterprise of rebuilding and reinstatement within measurable 
sight of completion. It was this Temple, we will remember, 
which, known to us as the Second Temple, was the center 
of reorganized worship and culture, of law and learning and 
religious administration, until near the coming of Jesus. 

Note. In both Haggai and Zechariah the prophecies are recorded 
after the manner of Ezekiel (see above, p. 260), that is, by the dated 
order of time, without apparent heed to its bearing on logical continuity. 
The time range here, however, is so limited, and events so keep pace 
with dates, that (except for one or two slight dislocations easily corrected) 
the two books move in lucid and orderly progress. 

It must here be noted that in considering the Book of 
the prophet Zechariah we are dealing only with chapters i 
to viii, as constituting a homogeneous whole. The succeed- 
ing chapters, ix to xiv, which will be taken up in the next 
section, can be clearly understood only as an addition, of 
other authorship and time, which has somehow come to be 
incorporated with the original book of Zechariah 's proph- 
ecy and which goes on to deal with more distinctively 
apocalyptic values. 

The tone of Zechariah 's prophecy is much more con- 
ciliatory than that of Haggai, and he approaches his subject 
in the less trenchant and more literary way of vision and 
parable. He is eminently constructive ; taking advantage 
of all the signs of promise that can be gleaned from the 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

undeniably poor situation in which his people find them- 
selves, and turning these to hopeful account. ''Who hath 
The Over- dcspiscd the day of small things ? " (iv, lo) — such 
taking Word is the monition, mixed of chiding and cheer, which 
Jehovah underlies his message as he observes leaders and 
people toiling at their work of Temple building and think- 
ing of the more splendid structure of the old time which 
they are unable to restore (cf. Hag. ii, 3, 4). He must 
make them aware of their shortcomings, but he must ap- 
proach them in a tempered austerity. They seem to have 
lapsed, in a too worldly spirit, into the same unfaith in 
Jehovah's word as had been the inveterate fault of their 
fathers in the past (i, 2-4). Even their Temple-building 
zeal has not cured that. His tactful introduction (i, 1-6), 
accordingly, reminds them that the ancient word, which 
though apparently so slow had overtaken their fathers, was 
still as vital as ever. It is a kind of echo, as it were a 
cadence, fitted to a less imposing occasion, of the Second 
Isaiah's more impassioned vindication uttered at the culmi- 
nation of his prophetic vision (Isa. Iv, 8— 1 1 ; cf. xl, 8). In 
this discouraging time the people need to know that the 
word has never yet been known to fail. It had so " over- 
taken " their fathers that they had turned and confessed, 
*' Like as Jehovah of hosts thought to do unto us, accord- 
ing to our ways, and according to our doings, so hath he 
dealt with us." 

Three months after this introductory message was given 

(i, 7) the word of Jehovah which came to Zechariah, and 

which makes up the main body of his book 

Visions ,. . , . r .^ - ' c • ■ 

Merging in (h /"Vi, 15), was sct forth m a series oi visions. 
Literal eight in all, of coordinated reach and meaning. 

To understand the prophet's drift in these visions, 
we must needs consider the situation of things in the gov- 
ernment. Five months before, Haggai had spurred rulers 
and people out of their apathy and self-indulgence to build 

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LITERARY FRUITS OF THE EXILE 

their Temple, and they were zealously at work ; but they 
were fresh from two generations of captivity, and it does 
not appear that they had much organization either civil or 
religious. These visions are Zechariah's parable method of 
meeting this undeveloped state of things. 

The visions fall into two groups (namely, i, 7-iii, lo, and 
iv, i-vi, 15), with four in each, the prophet making transi- 
tion from the first group to the second by a wakening as 
it were out of sleep (iv, i). Leading up to and down from 
two central visions wherein respectively Joshua the high 
priest and Zerubbabel the civil governor are named and 
instructed, these two groups of parables (or realistic pictures) 
are the prophet's chosen method of constructing a kind of 
model for the reorganized commonwealth. In his idea it 
is to be a dual government, in which the sacred and the 
secular elements, represented by these two men, are to have 
cooperative functions. "These," his informing angel says, 
''are the two anointed ones that stand by the Lord of the 
whole earth " (iv, 1 1-14). 

It seems, however, that in the course of these prophetic 
visions events occur which change the immediate outcome, 
making it less concrete, more apocalyptic. Broached while 
the civil ruler (Zerubbabel) is still of Jewish race and in 
fact a lineal heir to the Davidic throne, they seem to build 
too premature hopes on his person ; for as it turned out 
he soon disappeared from history, and except Nehemiah no 
civil governor of Jewish race succeeded him. He is assured 
of living till the Temple is finished and the '' plummet " is 
in his hands (iv, 9, 10) ; but when memorial crowns are 
brought forth only Joshua is named, and the rulership is 
somewhat vaguely attributed to ''the man whose name is the 
Branch" (vi, 12), while the headship of the state is sacred 
and priestly (cf. vi, 13). This transition from dual to single, 
however, is essentially of the prophetic ideal. The center 
and main significance of the state is in the Temple now 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

rebuilding ; its basic principle, as urged upon Zerubbabel 
himself, not military nor political but spiritual. '' Not by 
might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, saith Jehovah of 
hosts " (iv, 6). The prophet is thus minded, while not 
ignoring civic obligations, to make the distinctive ideals of 
the sanctuary the dominant principle of the reorganized state. 
This we may regard as the keynote of his prophetic message. 

Note. The Range of ZechariaJi's Visiofis. As above remarked, the 
eight visions — or pictured scenes — of Zechariah fall into two groups 
of four each • the first group (i, 7-iii, lo) leading up to Joshua and his 
function in the enlarged state, the second group (iv, i-vi, 8) pairing 
Zerubbabel with him and leading down through civic ideals to the 
starting-point. There is thus a kind of concatenation in the whole range 
of visions. Note the series in their order. 

'A. First Group ^ leadmg up through pi'ophetic symbols to Joshiia 

1 . The man in the myrtle-tree grove, who with horses has traversed 
the earth and finds it everywhere at rest. Meant perhaps as a gentle 
corrective to Haggai's prediction, uttered four months previously (Hag. ii, 
6-8), that Jehovah would soon shake the earth and cause all sorts of 
prosperity to flow into the rebuilt house ; but going on to report Jeho- 
vah's anger at the general supineness of the nations (i, 15), and the 
awaking of Jehovah's zeal for the welfare and mission of Zion. i, 7-17. 

2. The horns, — alien powers, — which heretofore have scattered 
Judah, Israel, and Jerusalem, and the smiths, appointed to terrify and 
demolish them, — as if clearing the way for Israel's larger and freer 
destiny, i, 18-21. 

3. The man with the measuring line, come to measure Jerusalem 
for walls, but peremptorily forbidden because any walls whatever will 
eventually be too small to contain her enlargement and prosperity. — 
Used, along with the preceding, to call in those who dwell yet " with 
the daughter of Babylon " to escape her lures and cast in their lot with 
their regenerated homeland, ii, 1-13. 

4. The Satan seen standing at the right hand of Joshua the high 
priest, to be his adversary. For thus maligning '' a brand plucked out 
of. the fire" he is sternly rebuked by Jehovah; but Joshua, in turn, 
who is clothed in filthy garments, is reclothed in clean priestly apparel 
and insignia. — Used as occasion to impress upon Joshua his high 
responsibilities and to appoint him and his colleagues as a sign of holier 

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LITERARY FRUITS OF THE EXILE 

things; ''for behold, I will bring forth my servant the Branch,:'. who 
in one day will purge the land from its iniquity and insure an era of 
prosperous peace, iii, i-io. 

B. Second Gfoup , bidnging promise to the civic 7-uler Zet'ubbabel, 
and going on to give civic and ethical symbols 

5. The golden candlestick with its seven lamps fed through seven 
pipes from two olive trees growing at the right hand and at the left. 
Used as symbol of the two anointed ones, sacred and civic agencies of 
Jehovah's essentially spiritual work, but directed especially to Zerub- 
babel, whose mission is to be accom.plished not by material but by 
spiritual means, and who will jfinish what his hands have begun, iv. 

6. The huge flying roll, sent forth over the face of the whole land 
as the " curse "^ or mentor — to unearth and consume theft and per- 
jury wherever these hide themselves. A suggestive symbol, valid to-day, 
of the penetrative and purifying power of literature as a factor for 
good, v, I --4. 

7. The hag wickedness, imprisoned in the barrel (ephah), weighted 
down with a leaden disk (talent), and borne forth by two women out 
of the Holy Land to the land of Shinar, where Babylon is and where 
is her own fitting place. A symbol of the banishment of business 
fraud. V, 5-1 1. 

8. The chariots and horses, symbols of the four winds of heaven, 
sent forth to and fro through the earth, and reporting the appeasement 
of Jehovah's spirit in the north country. It is as if here the series of 
visions were closed with the promise of solution, as an offset to the 
beginning (cf. ii, i i-i 5) when Jehovah's anger was roused by the apathy 
of the nations, vi, 1-7. 

A historical supplement, however, follows this last vision, in which 
supplement the prophet is directed to make crowns out of silver and 
gold brought by a deputation from Babylon, and set them upon the 
head of Joshua, but instead of naming also Zerubbabel (who seems to 
have disappeared) the prophet puts in his place "the man whose name 
is the Branch." These crowns are then to be laid up as memorials in 
the rebuilt Temple, vi, 9-15. 

Thus these visions of Zechariah, opening comforting out- 
looks to suit ''the day of small things " (cf. iv, 10), enlarge 
their scope to take in the Messianic values predicted two 
generations before by Jeremiah, whose presage of the " right- 
eous Branch" and his beneficent reign (Jer. xxiii, 5-8; 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

xxxiii, 15-18), strengthened later by Ezekiel and the Second 
Isaiah, is taken as an assured truth of prophetic foresight, 
which these narrower conditions do not avail to dim or 
make uncertain. 

Two years after Zechariah had brought his cheering visions 
to his people, a deputation from Bethel came to the Temple 
Fasting Cus- to lay before the priests and the prophets a 
toms of the question about fasting. The custom of fasting 

Exile Yield- , , , ,,?,,... , . , 

ing to the had bccomc an established institution during the 
Vital Issue seventy years of the captivity ; it and the observ- 
ance of the sabbath seem to have been the only general 
forms of organized religious custom open to the Jews in 
the foreign land.^ But in the prophetic ideal fasting was 
subject to grave abuses ; it was not according to the spirit 
that the prophets were minded to cultivate in Israel. It 
was essentially a separative act, self-regarding (vii, 5, 6), 
mindful only of past afflictions and wrongs, tending to draw 
away a man's^ regards from the welfare and fellowship of 
his neighbor. The Second Isaiah had already corrected this 
tendency to exclusiveness which the fasting custom pro- 
moted, and had emphasized the same better way which 
Zechariah now inculcates (see Isa. Iviii, i-ii). That better 
way was the way of tolerance, mercy, neighborliness, benefi- 
cence ; and this was not consistent with the mournful and 
ascetic spirit connoted by fasting. To this latter spirit the 
people were already too prone ; they had let the exile harden 
them not only against other nations but against their own 
less fortunate neighbors and sojourners (vii, 11, 12). 

Accordingly the prophet takes occasion of this deputation's 
inquiry not, indeed, to legislate either for the regulation or 
abolition of the custom but to inculcate such a genial spirit 
of tolerance, compassion, and brotherly kindness as would 
virtually supersede all fasting' austerities, turning them into 
occasions of joy and cheerful feasts (vii, 8-10; viii, 18, 19). 

1 See above, p. 328. 
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LITERARY FRUITS OF THE EXILE 

If they would keep their custom, let it be a hopeful and 
upbuilding one. "Thus saith Jehovah of hosts: 'The fast 
of the fourth month, and the fast of the fifth, and the fast 
of the seventh, and the fast of the tenth, shall be to the 
house of Judah joy and gladness, and cheerful feasts ; there- 
fore love truth and peace ' " (viii, 19). 

Thus, adapting itself to ''the day of small things," 
Zechariah's body of prophecy is like taking Isaiah Ivi to 
Ixvi with its cosmic and universal reference and translating 
it into terms suited to Jerusalem and the recovered home- 
land. In doing so his appeal is to the spiritual values which 
alone can make Judah great (cf. iv, 6) ; and like the earlier 
prophets he takes his stand uncompromisingly on that com- 
mon and as it were domestic righteousness which witnesses 
to Jehovah's will by sincere justice to and love of neighbor 
as exerted to the humblest and most needy. It is his gentler 
way of correcting the bad tendencies against which Haggai 
so bluntly contended, and setting up a constructive impulse 
in character to match their newly awakened constructive zeal 
for their Temple. The' ancient word of Jehovah has indeed 
"overtaken " them. " Should ye not hear the words which 
Jehovah cried by the former prophets, when Jerusalem was 
inhabited and in prosperity, and the cities thereof round 
about her, and the South and the lowland were inhabited ? . . . 
Thus .hath Jehovah of hosts spoken, saying, ' Execute true 
judgment, and show kindness and compassion every man 
to his brother ; and oppress not the widow, nor the father- 
less, the sojourner, nor the poor; and let none of 3'ou 
devise evil against his brother in your heart' " (vii, 7-10). 
It is the ideal that men like Ezekiel have planned and 
prepared for (cf. Ezek. xviii, 8 ; xlv, 9), the true law of 
the rebuilt Temple. 

With such a foundation laid, the rest of Zechariah's 
prophecy can let itself go in pure blessing and promise, a 
summarizing climax of heartening presage. * Prefacing each 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

prediction with the reiterated "Thus saith Jehovah of hosts," 
he leads his book up to its culmination (and perhaps that of 
A Prophetic Old Testament prophecy), in the eighth chapter, 
Decalogue ^y ^ progressive series of ten prophetic words, 
in which, as it were, he domesticates the vision of Isaiah 
in the home city and land. The most touching of these 
predictions, perhaps, is the idyllic picture he draws, in viii, 
4, 5, of the Jerusalem that is some day to be. It will be 
remembered that when the Jews returned from exile to 
the toils and hardships of a repatriated homeland, only 
the hardy and middle-aged could stand the journey and 
settlement ; the dearth of the very young and the very old 
was a saddening feature of the return. What blessing could 
be greater than to have these again in a restored social en- 
vironment } '' Thus saith Jehovah of hosts, ' There shall 
yet old men and old women dwell in the streets of Jeru- 
salem, every man with his staff in his hand for very age. 
And the streets of the city shall be full of boys and girls 
playing in the streets thereof.' " To such a normal social 
make-up the austerity of ritual fasting is incongruous and 
irrelevant (viii, i8, 19). Nor will such a city be any more 
a self -centered and exclusive place ; its attractiveness for all 
nations, and its kindly hospitality, will realize the consum- 
mation with which long ago the dreams of Isaiah and Micah 
began and which the Second Isaiah wrought into the Jewish 
redemptive spirit (viii, 23 ; cf. Isa. ii, 2-4 = Mic. iv, 1-5 ; 
Ix, 14, 15). 

II 

The Subsidence of Prophecy. Comparison of Zechariah's 
word with that of the other literary prophets seems to reveal 
the fact that with him and his time the momentous pro- 
phetic movement, active and strenuous since the days of 
Amos and Hosea,i is nearing its close. Its long fight with 

1 Joel also, in my view; see above, pp. 143-147. 
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LITERARY FRUITS OF THE EXILE 

the corruptions and iniquities of idolatry is over ; and the 
impassioned warnings and promises it has infused into the 
people's mind remain as vital as ever, an undying element 
of the nation's permanent literature. Zechariah's words, 
saying little about either the fight or the far triumph of 
spiritual forces, yet eminently encouraging and constructive, 
are like a kind of cadence, preparing for the pause where 
a new strain of thought and sentiment may begin. The 
impulsive effort of prophecy must be succeeded by the 
orderly and steadying regime of law. The rebuilt Temple 
and the visions of an organized government are the signs 
of this. So from Zechariah's time on, literary prophecy has 
little more to say. Two more prophetic books remain to be 
considered, both seeming to be anonymous, and these, while 
containing important and vivid oracles, yet are like a kind 
of subsidence, largely apocalyptic in nature, letting the pro- 
phetic attitude down to a habit of calm expectancy, while 
the more prosaic and matter-of-fact affairs of the repatriated 
nation go on their way. 

It has been remarked above ^ that our exposition of the 

Book of Zechariah included only chapters i to viii. That 

section of the book, as we have seen, is quite 

Anonymous , • i i i • 

Oracles homogeneous m theme and treatment, and is put 

Appended to j^ the prophet's name. All belong^s to a definitely 
Zechariah -n i • i ^ ^ ^• -i i i- • 

Specified time and to clearly discernible conditions. 

What follows, however, — namely, chapters ix to xiv, — is 

of very different character. Without giving author or date, it 

purports in general to communicate two burdens, or oracles, 

" of the word of Jehovah " : one (chapters ix to xi) seeming 

meant not only for Israel but for the world at large as 

thought of in Jewish terms ; the other (chapters xii to xiv) 

dealing with certain obscure and turbulent yet eventually 

victorious destinies of Israel itself. No clear result, as 

^ See above, p. 345. 
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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

regards either style or substance, comes from attributing 
these chapters to the pen or the restricted time of Zechariah ; 
nor indeed do scholars agree on any time before or after the 
exile that can be certainly verified from known events. They 
seem, indeed, like the concluding chapters of Isaiah, to 
belong to some era independent of historical annals. On 
the whole, so far as their prophetic tissue is colored by 
time at all, they seem to reflect an age considerably later 
than Zechariah, an age wherein a momentous apocalyptic 
solution of things is drawing nigh. It is thought by scholars 
that these chapters were a kind of prophetic waif which, 
when the so-called '' Book of the Twelve " ^ was made up 
for the Scripture canon, was appended to the last of the 
named prophets, the Book of Zechariah. 

It must not be inferred, however, that this section of 

our book is of subordinate importance or merely a stray 

incident of prophetic utterance. Rather, its rela- 

Gieams of tion to the body of literary prophecy is intimate 

the Coming ^nd cardinal. It strikes consistently into • the 

large divine outlook ; only, it is farther along 

the line, over the nearer horizon as it were, where not 

specific events but religious and cultural conditions fill the 

field of vision. Those conditions, though real and grounded, 

are to an extent shadowy and confused ; it is as if the 

prophet, schooled in the concepts of his time and race, 

lacked terms to make his vision real and literal in terms 

of the later era. Hence the inevitable obscurity of his 

utterance. In Wordsworth's poetic phrasing he is 

Moving about in worlds not realized. 

He has the mental impression of an order strange to his 
habitual conceptions, like a shimmering background, on 

1 In the Jewish make-up what we call the "minor prophets" (Hosea 
to Malachi) were gfouped as a single Scripture book and designated as 
" the Book of the Twelve." See G. A. Smith, '' The Book of the Twelve 
Prophets" (Expositor's Bible), Vol. I, pp. 3, 4. 

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LITERARY FRUITS OF THE EXILE 

which here and there gleam out things more visuaUzed and 
concrete, which give sohdity and meaning to the general 
spectacle. What situation, what movement of^ prophetic 
forms, lies thus displayed before him ? 

I think the conditions which on the whole best answer 
to the prophet's vision are those leading up to and sur- 
rounding the advent of the Messianic king. In other words, 
it is the Christian order and era, with glimpses of the way 
in which it is apprehended and treated. The Messianic king, 
now for the first time so called, — his, in fact, is the figure 
most concretely portrayed (ix, 9, 10), and so remarkably 
so that the description is taken up by a New Testament 
writer and identified with our Lord's triumphal entry into 
Jerusalem at his final appearance there (cf. Matt, xxi, 4, 5). 
This makes the prophetic situation distinctively Messianic. 
Other touches seem to reveal in almost clairvoyant vividness 
dramatic moments in Jesus' career, especially as related to 
men's reception of him. We may instance the passage 
about the thirty pieces of silver, xi, 12, 13 (cf. Matt, xxvi, 
14, 15 ; xxvii, 3-5); also the passage about looking upon 
him whom men have pierced, xii, 10 (cf. John xix, 34-37). 
These gleams of concrete acts, however, like things in a 
psychic's dream, are only imperfectly coordinated to a 
lucid and verifiable historic tissue. The prophet's vision is 
still in the glamor of apocalypse, not yet literal prediction. 

Enough is made definite and positive, however, to show 
that what the prophet has at the back of his mind is the 
difificult reconcilement of a reluctant people to 
Way to a the light and virtue of an essentially Christian 
Hard-Won order. The method of his utterance is admittedly 
obscure, for the vision extends beyond his horizon. 
What he dreams of, in fact, is merely Judaism raised to an- 
ideal power. But that indeed is what Christianity in its 
time set out to be ; that was the legitimate aim and service 
of prophecy. 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

Let us trace some of the stages in the prophet's idea. 

I. In his oracle on the nations (ix-xi) he puts himself 
at a period when the peoples adjoining Palestine to north 
and west are united with Jehovah's people in the same 
privilege and protection from alien .invasion and oppression. 
Here he announces to '' the daughter , of Zion " the coming 
of her king ; whose royal progress is described not in terms 
of splendor but in a character modeled on the idea of the 
lowly yet prevailing Servant of Jehovah, as we have seen 
him portrayed in Second Isaiah (ix, 9, 10 ; cf. Isa. xlii, 1-4; 
xlix, 7). His entry is spiritual, the advent of justice, good- 
will, salvation ; and this is the type of the regime that is 
up for men's acceptance or rejection. His coming is fol- 
lowed by the emancipation of the "prisoners of hope " 
from "the pit wherein is no water" (ix, 11, 12), and by 
what reads like a battle of world cultures between the two 
great spiritual forces of the world. "I will stir up thy 
sons, O Zion, against thy sons, O Greece, and will make 
thee as the sword of a mighty man" (ix, 13). This, as we 
know, has been the great conflict of ages ; modern times 
have expressed it as the struggle between Hebraism and 
Hellenism. 1 In this conflict both Judah and Ephraim, 
shoulder to shoulder, will rise to enhanced strength and 
valor ; the dispersed ones, too, will be brought home from 
the nations where they have been scattered, to walk in the 
strength and safety of a reunited people. 

Here, however, from the presage of the issue the prophet's 
thoughts return to the arduous way thereto, with its sad 
lack of response and appreciation. There are infirmities 
and perversities to be encountered, as would be natural in 
so great a revolution. This is symbolized by Jehovah's 

1 Readers will hardly need to be reminded of Matthew Arnold's " Culture 
and Anarchy " (especially chapter iv), in which with a keen yet one-sided 
view of the Hebrew mind he pleads for the less austere and more cultured 
Hellenism, — a critical judgment that has had enormous influence in our day. 

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LITERARY FRUITS OF THE EXILE 

dealing with the " shepherds," who in prophetic parlance 
are the acknowledged cultural leaders of Israel, and who, 
as already prophesied, are to be replaced by a supreme 
Shepherd. 1 Their proneness to heathen divinations and 
futilities have left shepherdless the people chosen to prevail 
(x, 2, 3) ; so Jehovah is minded to provide means to feed 
'' the flock of slaughter, whose possessors slay them, . . . 
and their own shepherds pity them not " (xi, 4, 5). To this 
end the prophet, in a passage of allegory, identifies himself 
with the true shepherd, and essays to feed and guard the 
flock. He takes two staves for the purpose, which he names 
''Beauty" and "Bands" (or, as our abstract idiom might 
put it, ''Grace" and "Unity"), — the saving cultural virtues 
of an educated people. But his endeavors are soon baffled. 
Only the poor of the flock sensed his valuable service when 
he expelled the extortionate shepherds ; so he had to break 
the staff of Grace ; and when, feeling his service done and 
despised, he called for his wages, he received only the 
paltry hire of a slave, whereat he broke the second staff 
(Unity), "that I might break the brotherhood between 
Judah and Israel" (xi, 7-14). This allegory was later as- 
sociated with the Judas episode in the betrayal and rejec- 
tion of Jesus (see Matt, xxvii, 9, 10); it should be noted that 
the passage there quoted (xi, 13) is attributed to Jeremiah. 
After this allegory of contempt the prophet, taking them 
according to their desert, assumes " the instruments of a 
foolish shepherd," and leaving them thus to the mercy of 
what they desire, predicts the coming of one who will neglect 
their welfare and feed himself from their fatness ; his final 
denunciation being, " Woe to the worthless shepherd that 
leaveth the flock! " (xi, 15-17). The great danger to their 
cultural prosperity, after all, is from their choice of and 
affinity with false and greedy leaders ; the true leader must 
survive only as the ultimate fittest and best. 

^ See above, pp. 272, 273. 
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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

2. In the oracle concerning Israel (xii-xiv) the prophet's 
regards are centered in Jerusalem, as the capital and type 
of the matured and dynamic influence of Israel, a city des- 
tined by the all-Creator who " formeth the spirit of man 
within him" to be ''a cup of reeling" and "a stone of 
burden " for all the peoples round about as they gather 
together in the siege against Jerusalem. It is a picture 
very different from that of Isaiah Ix, infinitely broader than 
Haggai's restricted Temple vision (Hag. ii, 6-9), yet in the 
same line of spiritual evolution. In drawing it the prophet 
avails himself of well-seasoned prophetic symbols. The figure 
of intoxication is used by Jeremiah to describe the effects of 
Babylonian culture on the nations, Israel included (Jer. li, 7), 
and, indeed, he has anticipated our prophet in this idea as 
applied to Israel's similar agency (Jer. xxv, 15-17). The 
stone has figured in Isaiah as ''a stone of stumbling" 
(Isa. viii, 14) and a foundation corner stone (xxviii, 16), 
but its effects are for Israel itself ; here in Zechariah it is 
a stone of burden heavy and grievous for alien nations to 
handle, — ' ' all that burden themselves with it shall be sore 
wounded " (xii, 3). The ideas thus taken up and reapplied 
have been gathering head ever since the beginning of the 
prophetic movement ; we trace its germs in Isaiah's redeem- 
ing remnant (Isa. x, 20), in the scion of Jesse (xi, 10 ; 
xlix, 22), onward to the prevailing mission of the collective 
Servant of Jehovah (xli, 15, 16). It is the idea that Israel 
is destined to be a kind of spiritual touchstone, a highly 
charged cultural force, which the world will cope with at 
its bliss or peril. I have already noted it in connection 
with Ezekiel's oracles on the nations who rejoiced at or 
profited by Israel's calamity.^ The same idea reappears in 
connection with our Lord's life and ministry (see Luke ii, 34 ; 
Matt, xxi, 44). Here in Zechariah it is rather rudimentally 
sensed ; but the prophet seems to feel a Messianic power, 

1 See above, p. 271. 

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LITERARY FRUITS OF THE EXILE 

not confined to an individual Personage but residing in a 
regenerate commonwealth of which a renewed Jerusalem is 
the type. I regard it as a dim presage of the power of 
Christian vigor and culture. It is on this conception of 
the matter, I think, that the meaning of this difficult oracle 
opens most lucidly. 

What the prophet is aware of, however, is not so much 
an accomplished end as a process. In a Jerusalem that 
could let its true leader labor in vain and would take up 
with a foolish and worthless shepherd (xi, 15, 17) there 
must be siege and sifting, there must be assimilation of 
new elements, there must be fiery assay as of silver and 
gold (xiii, 9). The rest of the oracle is concerned with 
various aspects of this experience. In the siege that occurs, 
wherein Judah is at first wavering (xii, 2), there seems to 
be a new segmentation of the people, as it were between 
the classes and the populace ; the former, '' the chieftains 
of Judah," coming to depend more upon "the inhabitants 
of Jerusalem," while the latter, identified largely with ''the 
house of David," increase in strength and godlikeness to 
a victorious power. Then follows the " spirit 6i grace and 
supplication," and bitter mourning, as the inhabitants of 
Jerusalem look upon '* him whom they have pierced " ^ 
(xii, 10-14). Following on this is "a fountain opened to the 
house of David and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem, for sin 
and un cleanness." The effect of this is that the inveterate 
idolatrous infection of Israel is purged away and forgotten 
(xiii, 2) ; and with it goes even the professional prophecy 
which has long perverted public opinion, — its practitioners 
discredited by their own kin and ashamed of themselves as 
they think how it has enslaved them (xiii, 3-5). The era 
of guesswork is over ; a larger fulfillment is in sight ; the 
time is evidently ripe for ''the subsidence of prophecy." 

1 Or ^' fne whom they have pierced" (xii, 10) identified, as also in the 
final act of deliverance (xiv, 3, 4), with Jehovah himself. 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATIJRE 

But the shepherd, — what of him ? The prophet who 
essayed the task had to break the staves of Beauty and 
Bands (Grace and Unity), the symbols of the true atmos- 
phere of culture, and a worthless shepherd has had sway. 
The sword is here invoked against the true Shepherd, '' the 
man that is my fellow, saith Jehovah of hosts " ; he must 
be smitten and the sheep scattered ; a sad negative, it would 
seem, to what the Second Isaiah so unconditionally announced 
(xiii, 7 ; cf. Isa. xl, ii). The sequel is a further reduction 
of the saved to a surviving third part, who in turn are 
purified by furnace, like the most precious ore. The ultimate 
assay of regenerate character must be radical and complete. 

In a final apocalyptic passage of great sublimity the 
denouement is ushered in, — no new idea, but a detailed 
_,, ^, iteration of what has been the crownins^ feature 

The Denoue- ° 

ment: when of the Isaian vision. After all the confusions 
TakeTthe ^^^ bafflements of human mind and conduct, 
Field in Jehovah takes the field in person. ''And Jeho- 
^^^°° vah shall be King over all the earth : in that day 

shall Jehovah be one, and his name one " (xiv, 9). One's 
thoughts go back to prophecies like Isaiah xxviii, 21 ; 
xli, 28 ; 1, 2 ; lix, 16 ; Ixiii, 5 ; wherein man's utter failure 
was God's supreme occasion. In the passage before us this 
prophecy is wrought out to its final expression. 

A decisive siege and sack of Jerusalem, accompanied by 
the hideous atrocities of ruthless war, is the introduction. 
Then Jehovah, entering the conflict, takes his stand on the 
mount of Olives over against the city ; and forthwith the 
mountain is cleft in twain, opening a great valley to east 
and west, through which his rescued ones escape. There 
follows on this a strange day, like a kind of twilight, in 
which things are dim and undefined ; " but it shall come 
to pass that at evening time there shall be light" (xiv, 7). 
Then Ezekiel's vision of living waters is repeated (see 
Ezek. xlvii, 1-12); only now, instead of flowing merely from 

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LITERARY FRUITS OF THE EXILE 

the Temple to the Dead Sea region, these waters flow from 
Jerusalem to both the eastern and the western seas, and 
perennially, summer and winter (xiv, 8). If this apocalyptic 
picture is not an idle fancy, — if a great truth was rising 
before the prophet's inner eye, — one must find room for 
its growing fulfillment not in an exclusive Judaism but in 
the undying power of Christian light and truth. Such 
prophecy may subside when it has said its say ; its divine 
vitality does not subside. 

In' estimating the meaning of what follows, as the oracle 
goes through various incidents of detail and emerges to cul- 
mination, we must still bear in mind that though a limitless 
stretch of sublime vision lies before him the prophet can 
use only the terms and concepts which he can share with 
his readers, and which must be left to after times to project 
to the deeper values that the ages have in store. He him- 
self too, looking to worlds not realized, is but a citizen of 
Jerusalem and imbued with the peculiar ideas of Judaism ; 
his vocabulary cannot well transcend that fact. It is the 
way with all the prophets ; it must needs be so. One is 
reminded of Tennyson's description of Arthur's knights, 
with their fervid but sometimes futile ideals : 

For these have seen according to their sight. 

For every fiery prophet in old times, 

And all the sacred madness of the bard, 

When God made music thro' them, could but speak 

His music by the framework and the chord ; 

And as ye saw it ye have spoken truth. 

The sight enlarges, undergoes transformation and correction ; 
the truth is not dimmed or outgrown. 

Let us not deem it strange or belittling, therefore, if our 
oracle, after a kind of excursion among nations and sweeping 
conditions, wherein anew their relation to the transcendent 
power centered in the spiritual Jerusalem is trenchantly de- 
picted (xiv, 12-19), emerges at length to a situation, as it 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

were homely and domestic, whereia things have fallen into 
normal and peaceful order, as in a permanent home. ''And 
men shall dwell therein, and there shall be no more curse ; 
but Jerusalem shall dwell safely" (xiv, ii). It is noteworthy 
that the concrete symbol of this perfected well-being, the 
cynosure of attraction and pilgrimage, is not the sanctuary, 
as with Ezekiel, but the feast of tabernacles, the secular 
feast of the year wherein the domestic and industrial bless- 
ings of life were brought to memory and thanksgiving ; that 
the homeliest, utensils of work and household are as sacred 
as the vessels of the Temple ; and that the spirit of trade 
and commercial greed shall no more invade the house of 
Jehovah.^ It is the idealized commonwealth, described in 
terms of common men and everyday affairs ; a state in which 
sacred and secular are no more at odds, but all is alike holy. 

On a previous page^ Zechariah is spoken of as ''the last 
of the named prophets," while the latter part of his book 
(ix-xiv) is regarded as consisting of two anony- 
Prophet of nious oraclcs which have somehow come to be 
Jehovah's appended to his original work. Each of these 
oracles has a peculiar heading (" The burden of 
the word of Jehovah," Zech. ix, i ; xii, i), a heading which 
occurs only in one other place, namely, at the beginning of 
the Book of Malachi. This book, accordingly, is by many, 
perhaps most, scholars held to belong to the same group of 
left-over oracles and to be, like the others, anonymous. The 
name "Malachi," which as translated " my messenger " reap- 
pears at chapter iii, i, does not in itself sound like a proper 
name, though it may be a contraction of " Malachiah." 

1 " No more a Canaanite," xiv, 21. The word " Canaanite," from the rul- 
ing propensity of that nation, came to mean a trafficker or trader, and this 
acquired with the more magnanimous a tinge of odium, hke our word 
" huckster." One sees this in the original of Prov. xxxi, 24 ; Isa. xxiii, 8 ; 
Ezek. xvii, 4; Hos. xii, 7 ; Zeph. i, 11. 

2 See above; p. 354. 

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LITERARY FRUITS OF THE EXILE 

The book, at any rate, gets more meaning from the word 
as a designation of its principal prediction than from its use 
as the name of a person who otherwise is wholly unknown. 

Malachi is about three quarters of a century later than- 
Haggai and Zechariah ; whether later also than the two 
appended oracles is uncertain. It belongs to the times of 
Ezra and Nehemiah, who did their reforming and rebuild- 
ing work in the years from 458 to 432 b.c, and reflects 
quite faithfully the degenerate conditions of those times, 
especially before Ezra's pentateuchal law. had taken its fixed 
hold on the people's mind. It impresses one as if for the 
last time the prophetic force were injected into a race which 
had almost ceased to be alive to its fervid and cogent spirit. 

The whole tone of this prophet's message evinces his 
feeling that the time has come to speak out bluntly and 
G ttin at pl^inly, no longer mincing matters with apocalyp- 
the Heart tic dreams but exhibiting conditions as they are 
Things ^^^ ^g ^l^gy tend. The community has drifted 

along in its perfunctory Temple and priest regime until this 
has become an old story. It seems, as it were, to be run- 
ning itself, and at the cheapest and easiest rate. Such a 
state of things, with its careless self-indulgence, can incur 
only one result : it brings upon itself the inevitable blight of 
a torpid conscience, heedless of moral and spiritual claims. 
This seems to have been the prevailing evil of the prophet's 
time ; and this, just this, is what the prophetic spirit and 
ideal can least tolerate. The whole labor of the prophetic 
movement from the beginning has been with a nation's con- 
science, to waken and educate it for a unique mission in the 
world. Hence our prophet's message, which evidently is 
given at a time when prophetic and even religious fervor 
is subsiding, is virtually a straight appeal to conscience, to 
the heart and meaning of things. 

His literary method, which is quite different from what 
we find elsewhere, is peculiarly adapted to this object. It 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

consists in first launching some incisive proposition — some- 
thing calculated to rouse reaction or doubt — and then, after 
asking the question that is sure to rise, proceeding to explain 
and enforce. It is a kind of Socratic dialectic employed not 
for philosophical inquiry but for spiritual conviction. The 
truths with which it deals are truths of the moral nature, 
which do not depend on logical premises, and which cannot 
be gainsaid. Thus it is not so much argumentative as ex- 
pository and assertive, — as indeed is the native bent of the 
Hebrew mind. Its objective is not reflection but conduct. 

Note. For this general cast of the Hebrew mind, as compared with 
the Hellenic, see above, pp. 37-39. The same distinction is touched 
upon also in connection with the wisdom literature, p. 94. It is worth 
noting that Malachi's activity fell in the age of Socrates, when Greek 
thinking and literature began to be an influence in the ideas of man- 
kind ; not that he drew from Greek methods, but that the human mind 
in general was coming to more systematic and logical formation of 
opinion, in a word, more intellectuality. 

In a series of such challenging attacks the prophet 
launches his indictment of the nation's torpid conscience. 
Scoring the addressing in turn the different classes — priests, 
General nobility,^ and general body — and scoring the 

Clerical and specific failing prevalent in each. Thus, going 
Common through the whole social order, he concludes them 
all under their peculiar tendencies to sin, — a significant 
summary of the conditions against which the coming of the 
messenger is due. 

He begins with the clergy, who as guardians of the 
organized Temple regime have the nation's spiritual welfare 
in charge. ''For the priest's lips," he says, ''should keep 
knowledge, and they should seek the law at his mouth ; for 

1 So for distinction we may perhaps designate the quasi-aristocratic 
class addressed as "Judah" (ii, 11), doubtless identical with the "chief- 
tains of Judah," Zech. xii, 5, — there distinguished from the "inhabitants 
of Jerusalem " who are of the rank and file. 

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LITERARY FRUITS OF THE EXILE 

he is the messenger of Jehovah of hosts " (ii, 7). It is not 
the claims of law, however, that he urges upon them, but 
of loyalty and service. Introducing his plea by a proof 
drawn from the contrasted doom and destiny of Edom that 
the brother nation of Israel is the favored object of Jeho- 
vah's love (i, 2-5), he takes the priests on the ground of 
the honor and reverence due to sugh paternal and filial rela- 
tion. ''A son honoreth his father, and a servant his master: 
if then I am a father, where is mine honor } and if I am a 
master, where is my fear .? saith Jehovah of hosts unto you, 
O priests, that despise my name " (i, 6). To their assumed 
question, " Wherein have we despised thy name V he goes 
on to specify that they offer for sacrifice to Jehovah gifts 
that they would not offer to their ruler, blind and lame and 
sick and blemished, so that the God whom the Gentiles 
honor (i, 11, 14) is made contemptible among his own 
people ; besides, the whole order of service is perfunctory 
and irksome to them, they have no heart in it or respect 
for it, and they shame their priestly ancestry in Levi, whose 
relations with God and people were genuine and just, in 
contrast to theirs, which have made them contemptible and 
base, false guardians of right and justice (i, 6-ii, 9). 

Against the notables ("Judah"), the pace-setters of public 
sentiment and conduct, who seem to rank as a kind of aris- 
tocracy, his indictment is more fundamental. His name for 
it is treachery. ''Have we not all one father.?" he asks; 
" hath not one God created us ? why do we deal treacher- 
ously every man against his brother, profaning the covenant 
of our fathers " (ii, 10).? As the foul type of this treachery 
he attacks the alarming prevalence of divorce, which is a 
deadly blow at the most sacred and helpful relation in life, 
that relation in which husband and wife become one. Judah 
had ''married the daughter of a foreign god " (ii, 11), thus 
dealing treacherously with the " wife of his youth," his com- 
panion, and the wife of his covenant. In their comparative 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

poverty and disfavor, it would seem, the custom had grown 
of putting away the native Hebrew wives, probably in order 
to marry into families of greater wealth and distinction 
among the more prosperous people of the surrounding prov- 
inces. But this was more than family unfaithfulness ; it 
bred wholesale falseness and wrong in a people that should 
be neighbors and- kindred. So when the Lord came as a 
refiner's fire to His Temple, His judgment would be against 
a sad accumulation of evils. '' And I will be a swift wit- 
ness," is the oracle, ''against the sorcerers, and against the 
adulterers, and against the false swearers, .and against those 
that oppress the hireling in his wages, the widow, and the 
fatherless, and that turn aside the sojourner from his right, 
and fear not me, saith Jehovah of hosts" (lii, 5). The torpid 
conscience has much to answer for, among people as among 
priests. It has let in evils that have poisoned the whole 
tissue of society. 

The people in general, too, come in for their share in the 
prophet's censure, and it reduces to much the same cause. 
Their religion has ceased to be a religion of faith. They 
seem to have regarded the service of Jehovah as a kind of 
barter, wherein they are no longer getting the worth of their 
money, and they do not scruple to rob God of the tithes 
and offerings that are His due (iii, 8), disposed as they are 
to count the paying values of life in terms of sheer worldli- 
ness. The prophet's summary of the matter is, "Ye have 
said, ' It is vain to serve God : and what profit is it that 
we have kept his charge, and that we have walked mourn- 
fully before Jehovah of hosts .? and now we call the proud 
happy; .yea, they that work wickedness are built up; yea, 
they tempt God, and escape'" (iii, 14, 15). So near to a 
reversal of their spiritual allegiance the prophet has found 
his people. Yet if they are minded to buy their blessings, 
he assures them of the right and rewarding way, namely, to 
prove Jehovah with an honest tithe (iii, 10-12). 

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LITERARY FRUITS OF THE EXILE 

But he turns intrepidly, as the prophets have done be- 
fore, as the supplementary Zechariah has done (cf . Zech. 
xiii, 9), to the little-heeded nucleus, sole faithful among the 
faithless. It is as if the chosen people were reduced again 
to a small remnant. But to them the promise is still strong 
and unfailing. "Then they that feared Jehovah," it is 
written as of an accomplished fact, '' spake one with an- 
other ; and Jehovah hearkened and heard, and a book of 
remembrance was written before him, for them that feared 
Jehovah, and that thought upon his name" (iii, i6). A new 
note is here struck. The former remnant was the pledge 
and germ of redemption, a pledge which the Second Isaiah 
saw fulfilled. Here the note is of fellowship, "one to an- 
other." One of the sweetest tributes of all prophecy is 
reserved for such fellowship and mutual understanding in 
steadfast loyalty (iii, 17) ; it defines the principle out of 
which is to come the regeneration of society. 

We have called Malachi the prophet of Jehovah's messen- 
ger, the messenger that the priests of the reorganized com- 
monwealth ought to have been (cf . ii, 7) but failed 
Messenger to be. With their insincere and perfunctory 
and his ministrations, the mark of a torpid conscience, 

Function , , .' , . t i i > 

they were domg nothmg to prepare J ehovah s way 
before Him. The messenger's power and function, on the 
other hand, must be prophetic, charged with all the vital 
spirit of prophecy. Yet his function is not executive but 
preparatory (iii, i). Elijah the prophet, who is identified 
with him, is sent to "turn the heart of the fathers to the 
children, and the heart of the children to their fathers " 
(iy, 6), that is, to induce such unity of idea and sympathy 
as shall be the fitting preparedness for ' ' the day that I 
make" (or, "that I do this" cf. iii, 17; iv, 3). We' know 
how some four hundred and seventy-five years afterward 
this prophecy of " my messenger " was on Jesus' own 
authority interpreted of John the Baptist, ^ whom for the 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

work he did Jesus held to be "a prophet, and much more 
than a prophet" (see Matt, xi, 7-15 ; xvii, 10-13). Thus 
the last word of Old Testament prophecy joins with the 
first word of the New Testament prophecy, a word wherein 
prediction passes into fulfillment. All is in the same line 
of preparation for the greatest event of history, and proph- 
ecy subsides only to bide its time until its next word shall 
be final. 

As compared, however, with the searching sequel for 
which it is a preparation, this function of the messenger is 
only preliminary and prelusive, as befits the last brave potency 
of an old spiritual order. Its significance centers in what it 
introduces. Along with "the messenger of the covenant, 
whom ye desire " is One greater ; " the Lord, whom ye 
seek, will suddenly come to his temple" (iii, i). It will not 
do to cramp this prediction to literalism by referring it to 
Jesus' entry into the Temple and his expulsion of the traders 
and money-changers (John ii, 13-17), though this belongs 
to the advent of the same momentous order. The prophet's 
vision, while it comports with this, is much more far- 
reaching. And here a new prophetic symbolism controls 
the vision, one hitherto only touched upon (cf. Isa. xlviii, 
10 ; Zech. xiii, 9), the symbol of the refiner's fire. We will 
recall how the Second Isaiah's ruling symbolism of coming 
blessing was that of water, with its connotation of refresh- 
ing, fertility, and cleansing (Isa. xli, 17-19; xliii, 20; 
xliv, 3 ; xlix, 10; Iv, i). Ezekiel too, from his priestly and 
ritual sense of things, promises a like purifying by water 
(Ezek. XXX vi, 25). Here the sense goes deeper than out- 
ward prosperity and enlivening to the inner centers of 
regenerate character, and its radical results correspond (iii, 
3-6). ' The prophet's further description of the day of fire 
presents a very significant contrast. To the wicked it fig- 
ures as a consuming furnace, working complete 'destruction 
of their proud and base ambitions. To those that fear 

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LITERARY FRUITS OF THE EXILE 

Jehovah's name, on the other hand, " shall the sun of right- 
eousness arise with healing in its wings " (iv, 2), — like the 
fire of opulent and orderly nature, in which is joy and 
growth and strength. 

In the New Testament use of this symbolism, the tran- 
sition from the old to the new order is definitely made in 
terms of water and fire ; the former being adopted by 
John the Baptist as the meaning of his preparatory mission 
(Matt, iii, 11), the latter recognized by Jesus as the mean- 
ing of his own ministry (Luke xii, 49, 50) and passed on 
to literal fulfillment in the coming of the Holy Spirit 
(Acts i, 5 ; ii, 1-4). Thus prophecy subsides, to make 
room for something better. 



[369] 



CHAPTER VII 

THE PURITAN ERA AND ITS LITERATURE 

[From 458 B.C. onwards] 

IN THE foregoing chapter, dealing with the literary fruits 
of the exile, we have traced the course of prophecy, its 
Retro e t ^^^^t timely and characteristic product, beyond the 
and New limits of the return, ' to the time of Ezra the 
Foothold scribe, about eighty years after the recolonizing 
of the Holy Land. Here it reaches a point where we can 
glance back at the mighty prophetic movement as a whole .^ 
Rising at the menace of Israel's political doom, in the times 
of Joel, Amos, and Hosea, that movement has kept pace 
with the whole period of Israel's peril, suspense, break-up, 
and eventual restoration ; faithfully interpreting it all as in 
the unfolding will and purpose of God, keeping the people's 
mind true to its duties and destinies ; reaching its nodes 
of greatest stress and immediacy with Isaiah of Jerusalem, 
Jeremiah, and the Second Isaiah ; forging onward in fervor 
and certitude toward a large Messianic future ; then, after 
the return, gradually subsiding as the people's enthusiasm 
became chilled and disillusioned ; going out finally in spasms 
of occasional warning and broken gleams of an apocalyptic 
new order. One can imagine that the Book of Malachi, 
sternly severe as it was, got little response in his generation, 
except from the liandful of devout-minded souls (cf. Mai. iii, 
16-18) in whom the spirit of a nobler order was still alive. 
That prophet was indeed sensible that his word was a final 

1 For the general map of the prophetic movement, sketched from its 
beginning forward, see above, pp. 133-137. 

[370] 



THE PURITAN ERA AND ITS LITERATURE 

or rather pausing message to his people, a virtual postpone- 
ment of prophecy to a more rewarding season. And later, 
probably about when the Daniel apocalypse was due, there 
came a time when men of religious aspiration were com- 
plaining, " We see not our signs ; there is no more any 
prophet ; neither is there among us any that knoweth how 
long" (Psa. Ixxiv, 9). Such, broadly speaking, was the 
curve of rise, culmination, and subsidence of the prophetic 
strain in the development of Biblical literature. Conceived 
and maintained by men of lofty vision and faith, whose 
sole care was that Jehovah's word and will should prevail, 
it did untold service toward the race's realization of its 
noble mission and destiny. 

And its decline was not in failure or doubt, but in qui- 
escence and pause, waiting, so to speak, until other strains 
could catch up with it. It was always a specialized utter- 
ance. As the literature of spiritual ideal and insight it had 
dealt with the crises and emergencies of the nation's expe- 
rience.^ Hence its high plane of intensity ; its formula of 
warrant '' Thussaith Jehovah," fitting its impassioned appeals 
to high surges of zeal and resolve. It was a literature 
dynamic, inspirational. 

As such, however, prophecy was less mindful of the static 
levels of an established cultus and government, and of the 
cultural needs of domestic and individual life. Hence its 
natural subsidence when the restored nation's affairs had 
become uniform and prosaic, — that equable progress whose 
annals are dull.^ It was giving place to a cultural regime 
of more pervasive and educative character. Accordingly, the 
ensuing period was one during which the people's response 
was more to the activities of scribes and priests and rabbis, 
who functioned as scholars, magistrates, and religious teachers. 

1 See above, pp. 127-129. 

■^ " Happy the people whose annals are blank in history books." — 
Montesquieu, quoted by Carlyle. 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

Its historical remains from Nehemiah's time onward are very 
scanty. One judges its tone and mood partly by hints and 
inferences drawn from contemporary productions and partly 
by the' literary situation at the coming of Jesus. It has 
been called, too indiscriminately I think, "the night of 
legalism." A more fitting name, suggestive of an analogous 
period in modern religious history, is The Puritan Era. 

The literature that gave character and color to this era 
calls now for consideration. 

I. The Initiative from Babylon 

It does not appear that when the Jewish people went 
back from Chaldean exile to the homeland they had with 
The Dearth ^^^^ ^^Y considerable number of scholars and 
of Learning writers. The situation was not favorable to re- 
in jerusa em f^j^gj^gj^^ Qf culture. Thosc who returned were 
virtually settlers and pioneers, whose energies must be em- 
ployed in building homes and reclaiming the land. A spirit 
of piety and enthusiasm, roused by prophetic assurance, had 
brought them there, but this in itself was a slender support 
against the trials and disillusions they must encounter. Two 
generations of captivity in a strange land, without autonomy 
or methodical cultus, had impoverished their civic and re- 
ligious thinking. We see this reflected in the moral con- 
ditions that Haggai and Zechariah recognized in their efforts 
to get the Temple rebuilt. It was a relatively primitive 
state of society, wherein the leaders were careless of duty 
and the priest's robes were dirty (cf. Zech. iii, 3). Nor, as 
it would seem, did matters greatly improve after the Temple 
was dedicated. It was not furnished with the robust devo- 
tion and loyalty that a recovered sanctuary service ought to 
have. This we see in the faithless and insincere conditions 
that Malachi found at about the time of Ezra's arrival from 
Babylon. The people needed a new access of religious faith 

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THE PURITAN ERA AND ITS LITERATURE 

indeed, but also they needed a sounder infusion of thought 
and learning from their inherited store of tradition and 
instruction. They were not living up to their history and 
heritage. 

I 

Post-Exilic Men of Letters and their Work. From this 
unsatisfactory state of things in the Holy Land we return 
now. to consider the situation of the Jewish communities 
still remaining in Chaldea and Persia. They constituted, 
as we have seen,^ the great majority of the people : the 
men of age and distinction and property and culture who 
were not so well fitted for the pioneer work of recolonizing, 
and whom in the large sense we recognize as the Jews of 
the Dispersion. It is to the representative thinkers and 
scholars of these communities, perhaps to guilds of these, 
that we are to look for the principal literary activity of the 
time beginning with the exile and continuing till perhaps 
a century or so after the return. 

From the time of the situation disclosed in Ezekiel and 

Second Isaiah onward the history of the Jews who still 

„ , remained in Chaldea and Persia is silent. We 

Prophecy 

Succeeded by can judge of its tenor only by some of its liter- 
Scholarship ary effects. As we have seen, the interest of 
the few salient stages known to us — the hopeful return, 
the hardships of recolonizing the homeland, and the labor 
of a poverty-stricken people to rebuild their Temple — is 
transferred to Jerusalem. But this was the history of an 
essentially religious movement responding to the enthusiasm 
of prophets and priests. Its impulsion came rather from 
an imagined future than from a storied past, and the char- 
acter of its devotees corresponded. The more intellectual 
and scholarly element of the nation remained in the land of 
their exile ; for this had become to them an adopted home 

^ See above, p. 327. 
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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

where they could cultivate their ideals as well as in the 
shadow of the Temple. So long deprived of a sanctuary, 
they had come in their cultus to depend less on ritualistic 
forms and more on the spirit. A few simple customs, sijch 
as private and communal prayer, the observance of the 
Sabbath, and memorial fasting, sufficed them as well in 
neighborhood synagogues as in a centralized Temple. The 
development of the synagogue service, accordingly, is a 
characteristic feature of the Jews of the Dispersion. . 

In all this silent experience their most valuable possession 
was the rich deposit of literature, historic and prophetic, 
which they had inherited from their fathers. To this they 
turned with a zest and reverence that they had never known 
before. It embodied the principles and ideals that had 
separated them from the mass of humanity and made them 
a nation. Its elements, well ingrained by their prophetically 
guided history, made them consciously superior, in a spirit- 
ual sense, to the highly civilized people among whom their 
lot was cast. This consciousness was the motive power of 
their unity and redemption. Accordingly, the regards of 
their men of insight and letters were turned to the work 
of collecting, coordinating, revising, and supplementing the 
fund of national literature which their past had bequeathed 
to them. It is this which we note as the dominant literary 
activity of the exile period in Chaldea ; this it was which 
called together and unified their literature and made them 
the people of a book. 

What shape this fund of the nation's literature was in, 
when from its depositary in the Temple or in private keep- 
, ing it was hastily gathered up and carried, prob- 
Literary ably with the first deportation, into the land of 
Cleavage captivity, we do not know, but we can reasonably 
conjecture. It was doubtless in separate rolls, sheets, and 
tablets ; some in fairly complete form, some in memoranda 
or fugitive collections ; rudely classified, if at all ; archives, 

[374] 



THE PURITAN ERA AND ITS LITERATURE 

historical annals, genealogies, laws and ordinances. Temple 
psalms and songs, proverbs, and the utterances of the liter- 
ary prophets, all more or less jumbled together, and still 
doubtless, as they had been, in the keeping of the clergy 
or priests. And the clergy, with no official work of the 
altar to do, turned to the study of their civic and religious 
archives, and became scribes or scholars. So, as during the 
captivity prophecy culminated and later subsided, scholar- 
ship, gradually taking its place, grew in vigor and solidity 
and became a dominant achievement of the men of leading. 
To this not only their enforced leisure but the atmosphere 
of a cultured land would contribute. They could estimate 
their literary accumulations in a new light. 

There were naturally two lines of cleavage in the work 
undertaken by these unnamed scholars : one selecting the 
works adapted to the present needs in Chaldea, and of the 
Dispersion in general ; the other collecting and codifying 
the works adapted to the permanent and as it were con- 
stitutional needs of the people who had returned to the 
homeland to set up their capital anew. 

I. It would naturally begin, I think, with their store of 
prophecies, whose truth and sanity had been so vindicated 
n.^ r • X by the event of fulfillment and restoration. All 

The Line of -^ 

Vindicated the extant work of the literary prophets, as we 
Prophecy have Seen, had centered about this crisis of 
national break-up and exile ; and its vitality would be evi- 
dent now. It had become classic. Accordingly, with the 
work of Jeremiah and Ezekiel still fresh in mind as a 
nucleus, these scholars would bring together, arrange, and 
perhaps touch up and fill out the earlier remains. The last 
two chapters of Jeremiah — to mention only one example 
— are generally regarded as a case in point ; and we have 
seen how grandly the unknown Second Isaiah supplemented 
the torso left by Isaiah son of Amoz, making it a finished 
vision covering virtually the whole prophetic period. So it 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

would fare also with Micah, Nahum, Zephaniah, Habakkuk, 
for the Judean state ; nor would they omit Hosea and 
Amos for the still earlier northern kingdom ; for the proph- 
ecy of Isaiah (cf. Isa. xi, 11-13) and later of Ezekiel 
(cf . Ezek. xxxvii, 1 5-28) had come true, and the whole 
Israelitish race was again united in spirit. In the feeling 
of the prophets, indeed, it had never been divided ; their 
ultimate mission was one. 

It was the body of collected prophecy, not unlikely, that 
became the favorite reading matter of the Jews of the Dis- 
persion and of the outlying districts of Palestine, in the 
scattered communities where in course of time synagogues 
were erected in which both for religious service and popular 
education Scripture was read and cherished. Such com- 
munities had less use, relatively, for such rules and rituals 
as in the Pentateuch are associated with Temple and clergy, 
and more relative regard for the fervid ideals of the proph- 
ets, with their more spacious interpretation of life. Such 
differentiation of literary interests would produce its own 
type of emphasis and sentiment. We see the effect of this 
different attitude in the time of Jesus' ministry, when he 
and his Galilean disciples were imbued with prophetic ideas, 
while the Jews of the capital, with whom they came in con- 
tact, had become hard and intolerant in their narrow regard 
for the law of Moses and the usages of ecclesiasticism. 

2. Here, however, we must take renewed note of the 
distinctive Hebrew genius. In the mind of the Jewish 
The Line of scholars prophecy was intimately involved in his- 
Historicai tory ; history — />^^?y history at least — was essen- 
vo ution tially prophetic.^ It was luminous with the mind 
and purpose of Jehovah. They regarded their greatest law- 
giver as their greatest prophet (cf. Deut. xxxiv, 10) ; they 

1 For remarks on the Hebrew genius for history and prophecy, as 
compared especially with the Greek genius for philosophy, see above, 

PP- 37-39- 

[376] 



THE PURITAN ERA AND ITS LITERATURE 

accepted the prophets as interpreters of events (cf. Amos iii, 7) ; 
and when later their body of Uterature assumed the form 
of a canon the collection of books narrating the nation's 
history (Joshua to Second Kings) was counted as prophecy, 
being called "the earlier prophets" {iibhiim rshonim), 
while the prophets proper (Isaiah to Malachi) were called 
'' the later prophets " {nbhiim aharonini). This shows how 
liberally and honorably the idea of prophecy was construed. 
Nor were the prophets proper ranked as mere augurs and 
diviners, like the professional fortune tellers of other nations ; 
such, in fact, came to discredit and shame (cf. Jer. xxvii, 9 ; 
Zech. xiii, 3-5); rather, they were regarded as spokesmen 
of Jehovah, interpreting the meaning and tendencies of his- 
torical conditions and events. As a recent writer has put 
it, " Rightly regarded, prophecy is the statement of eternal 
truth in a form suited to an immediate occasion." ^ So 
intimate, in the matured scholarly view, was the blending of 
prophecy'and history ; so reverent the spirit accorded to both. 
As such interpreters the prophets proper had their degree 
of authority, an authority adequate for present faith and 
stimulus ; but the history itself, with its developed laws and 
proved lessons, came to have an authority still greater. It 
was the authority of fact illuminated by values, the values 
of a divinely guided evolution. Such liberal estimate of the 
past led these old-time scholars to deal fairly, rigidly indeed, 
with the records in their hands. In compiling the annals 
of their leaders, judges, and kings they did not take liberties 
with their historical material ; did not twist or deny its state- 
ments. They had gathered it from many sources documen- 
tary and traditional, ranging from state archives to personal 
and family narratives, and they were content to set the 
stories side by side, ignoring the risks of discrepancy and 
relative authenticity. Hence the impression we get of a 

1 See above, pp. 127, 141. The quotation is from an article by Theodore 
H. Robinson in The Interpreter (July, 1917), p. 137- 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

thoroughly honest histor)', free from obtrusion of the his- 
torians' personal notions, and preserving to large degree 
the contemporar\' tone and color of its venerable sources. 
Yet also it is eminently homogeneous, consistent, continuous ; 
and as to literar\- artistr}', its masterly selection of relevant. 
and essential material from so vast and varied a mass is 
evinced in the fact that it has told the story of a race from 
prehistoric and patriarchal times through many centuries, 
from Chaldea to Chaldea again, in a compass which in our 
day makes up only a section of a single volume. This is 
no place to go into detail ; it is sufficient, in estimating the 
work of these nameless scholars and scribes, to take note 
of this general master)' of the historic sense and method. 

As standards of orthodoxy and authority, however, the 
works of the prophets were not the first to be gathered for 
T , , the uses of an eventual Scripture canon. The 

Law-ordered ^ ^ 

History the condition of things in the recolonized homeland, 
^^^^ already described, called for an initiative of another 

kind from Babylon. There were other works that had a 
prior claim ; • namely, the laws of Moses, embodying the 
code and constitution of Israel, with the primitive histories 
that led up to and accompanied them. These seem to have 
been in more mixed and chaotic condition than the proph- 
ecies ; in more need therefore of the organizing touch of 
scholarship. There was more need also of vigor and sys- 
tem in preparing them for renewed use ; for the restored 
community in Jerusalem was growing lax and loose for want 
of them, and must needs be brought to a sense of their 
uncompromising authority (cf. Jehovah's warning, Mai. iii, 6). 
One body, or version, of Mosaic law was already well known : 
that book of the law which was found in the temple in the 
time of Josiah, and which we identify with the Book of 
Deuteronomy.^ Perhaps also Ezekiel's visionary sketch for 
the reorganization of the cultus, Ezek. xliv to xlvi, had been 

* See " The Book Found in the Temple," pp. 220-228 above. 

[378 J 



THE PURITAN ERA AND TCS LITERATURE 

taken' back to the homeland for use in starting anew. But 
the rebuilt Temple with its usages, and the church now 
in the governance of High Priests, which had replaced the 
Jewish state, required more articulated and systematized jegis-- 
lation than this Book of Deuteronomy could supply ; and 
Ezekiel's scheme, drawn up largely, it would seem, from his 
memory of priestly usages, could only be preliminary ; the 
cultus must have more ancient and tested authority than a 
hasty sketch could give it. To collect and codify the scattered 
laws of a people must be the work of scholars, and it must 
take time and study. How many scribes were engaged on 
this work we do not know, nor how long their researches 
took ; its results appear in the work and influence of one man, 
Ezra, '' a ready scribe in the law of Moses " (Ezra vii, 6), who 
in 458 B.C., sixty years after the dedication of the rebuilt 
Temple, appeared in Jerusalem with the completed law of 
Moses in his hand. " For P2zra had set his heart to seek 
the law of Jehovah, and to do it, and to teach in Israel 
statutes and ordinances" (Ezra vii, 10). 



II 

Ezra: Scribe and Scholar. Ezra's arrival in Jerusalem 
from Babylon was in many ways auspicious. Of priestly 
lineage direct from' Aaron, he seems from his eminent 
learning and piety to have obtained the esteem of King 
Artaxerxes, who by royal letter authorized him to act as 
special lawgiver and magistrate, with power both to pro- 
mulgate and enforce the law of his God and of the king. 
There accompanied him about fifteen hundred like-minded 
men, volunteers from leading priestly and Levitical families, 
who in the troublous years that ensued proved a strong 
nucleus and support in the reformed doctrines and customs 
thus introduced from Babylon. They took with them a 
handsome subsidy of gold and silver for the maintenance 

[379] 



GUIDEBOOK TQ BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

of Temple services and other objects. Such a reenforcement 
from their more well-to-do brethren was no small boon, both 
material and cultural, to the poverty-straitened residents of 
the capital ; and it was received with suitable thanksgiving 
and honor (Ezra vii, viii). 

Arrived in Jerusalem, Ezra's essentially Puritan spirit was 
not tardy in making itself felt. One of the truest and 
Puritan stanchest men of all Hebrew history, he yet had 

Spirit in the defects of his qualities. With all his devotion 

Outbreak , , .... • i r i 

and Stern to sacred learnmg, havmg the severe mmd ot the 
Inquisition scholar, he had therewith the unbending strict- 
ness, not to say bigotry, of the trained specialist. He could 
tolerate no deviation from the straight line of his grounded 
convictions, nor had he withal the tact to deal graciously 
with men of other opinions. And his first discovery of 
conditions in Jerusalem invaded — outraged as he conceived 
— the very central tenet of his reforming creed. It was 
the discovery of the mixed marriages, marriages with women 
of alien and idolatrous nations, which had become omi- 
nously prevalent in the priestly and Levite classes. We have 
noted how these were denounced by Malachi. The dramatic 
scene in which he deals with this alarming discovery is 
almost like an uncontrolled outbreak of frenzied fanaticism 
(Ezra ix). The crowd who had assembled, grieved at his 
strange demeanor and stung by a vague -sense of guilt, were 
at first easily pliant to his imperious will. He lost no time 
in exacting from them an oath to put away their foreign 
wives ; but later, on account of this and perhaps other 
arbitrary acts of his,^ a sullen reaction set in which for a 
time apparently ended his active influence, costing him 
twelve years of silent waiting before, availing himself of the 

1 If Ezra iv, which seems out of place and connection, narrates an event 
of this period, it would seem that he attempted to rebuild the city walls ; 
an attempt frustrated by his enemies' remonstrance to King Artaxerxes, 
which of course brought him into discredit. For an excellent history of 
all this complicated period, see Hunter, "After the Exile," Vol. II. 

[38°] 



THE PURITAN ERA AND ITS LITERATURE 

patronage of Nehemiah, he could bring his completed law- 
book to the attention of the people. ^ Nor did it transpire, 
when at length he executed his authorized commission, that 
his law had given him clear and positive warrant for such 
drastic measures. He had allow^ed his zeal for Jewish 
exclusiveness and pride and purity of race to outrun his 
learning. But, as we shall see, he was not the man to give 
up his great call of duty. 

At length, however, his opportunity came. It is not our 
province to deal with the civil history of the Jews except 
The Birthday SO far as it fumishes a background for the lit- 
of Judaism erature. Suffice it to say, the coming of Nehe- 
miah as governor and the successful rebuilding of the city 
walls intervened. Doubtless Ezra's season of obscurity was 
by no means a season of inactivity. He had his Chaldean 
colleagues with him ; he was strengthening his plans and 
approaches ; perhaps also he was learning to adopt a more 
tempered and conciliatory behavior ; nor can we omit to 
mention that Nehemiah, his stanch friend and supporter, 
supplied the tact and management of men that he lacked. 
At any rate, when after twelve silent years he came out of 
his retirement to read his book of the Mosaic law, it was 
at the respectful call of the assembled people (Neh. viii, i). 
Perhaps also in this lean time, when prospects were begin- 
ning to brighten, the old prophecy of Amos was coming 
true : " Behold, the days come, saith the Lord Jehovah, 
that I will send a famine in the land, not a famine of bread, 
nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of Jehovah " 
(Amos viii, ii). The call to Ezra was significant of much 
in the more wholesome attitude of the people toward the 
seasoned and steadying ideas of life, ideas not dependent 
on violent and transitory waves of emotion or fanaticism. 

1 This we infer from the fact that nothing more is said of Ezra until 
Nehemiah, coming as governor, has completed the repair of the city walls 
and gates ; cf. Neh. viii, i. 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

The day of the year 444 b.c. on which, before a great 
multitude of princes, priests, and people, Ezra '' stood upon 
a pulpit of wood which they had made for the purpose " 
(Neh. viii, 4) and read from his long-studied book of the 
law, while his able colleagues aided him by reading distinctly 
(literally, interpretatively) and giving the sense, '' so that they 
understood the reading" (viii, 8), has been aptly named 
''the birthday of Judaism." -It was the initiation of that 
cultural period, extending to the advent of Christianity, 
during which the Jewish mind, in its narrowness and its 
breadth, its tenacity and its intensity, was coming progres- 
sively to its own. This fact makes the eighth chapter of 
Nehemiah one of the most notable chapters in the annals 
of Biblical literature. As the people listened, realizing with 
every responsive ''Amen, Amen" how grievously they had 
neglected and despised the lessons of their past, they 
were at first disposed to weep. But their wise governor 
Nehemiah, under whom they had rebuilt their walls and 
reorganized their commonwealth, put a prompt check on 
this untimely sadness. " This day," said he, " is holy unto 
Jehovah your God ; mourn not, nor weep. ... Go your 
way, eat the fat, and drink the sweet, and send portions 
unto him for whom nothing is prepared ; for this day is 
holy unto our Lord, neither be ye grieved : for the joy of 
Jehovah is your strength " (viii, 9, 10). These noble words 
strike the needed keynote of the new Judaism here coming 
to birth. The nation had too long clung to the benumbing 
grief which under the form of fasting had become an or- 
dained memorial of its hated captivity and subjection. The 
prophet Zechariah had already urged its discontinuance, 
or rather its conversion into expressions of generosity and 
fellowship (Zech. vii, 4-10; viii, 18, 19). It had been the 
mark of the nation's weakness and self -distrust. This ex- 
hortation of Nehemiah's, on the other hand, gives the note 
of returning self-respect ; and strength, the strength of a 

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THE PURITAN ERA AND ITS LITERATURE 

newborn faith, is in it. The next day this "joy of Jehovah" 
was expressed in spontaneous form. Having found in their 
continued reading the ordinance of the Feast of Booths, the 
old-time joy festival, the people forthwith gathered boughs 
and branches of trees, erected their booths, and for seven 
days kept the feast as it had not been kept since the time 
of Joshua the son of Nun (viii, 13-18). Every day, too, 
the law was read, as most truly a part of the feast. 

This " birthday of Judaism " was of course only a birth- 
day, and the hazardous period of infancy and youth must 
naturally follow. Of this, with its vicissitudes of 
Fruitege good and bad faith, its lapses from Puritan stand- 
of Ezra's ards, its strifes of classes and parties, its secret 

Scholarship . ,,,,.. 

evasions of the prescribed order, it is not our 
part here to speak ; a masterly account of it may be found 
in Mr. Hunter's book.^ Ezra disappears again ; the fluctu- 
ations of policy and sentiment go on without him ; and it 
seems not unlikely that he died with a sense of personal 
neglect and failure. But his work and influence clung and 
grew ; since Moses the most vital and fundamental element 
in all Judaism. Without his judicious, constructive, scholarly 
handling, the body of Mosaic statutes and ordinances might 
have remained scattered and uncoordinate, disjecta membra 
of a code, or buried in forgotten archives. Without his 
selective and organizing genius the intimate interactions of 
history and divine instruction {torahf' would have missed 
their adequate notice and record. Yet his mind was essen- 
tially that of the annalist and scribe ; not creative except 
in the editorial sense. We cannot certainly point to any 
inventive composition of his, like that of the prophets and 

1 See above, p. 339, footnote. 

2 It is to be noted that the Hebrew word torah, which we too narrowly 
translate " law," has not with the Jews the formal and magisterial sense 
that we associate with the term ; rather it is " instruction," " direction," 
with the' sense of personal impartation and elucidation. 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

sages. But it was to this more pedestrian scribal work that 
the Jewish mind was now tending ; it responded eagerly to 
such methods as his. Ezra became accordingly, in influence 
if not in person, the founder of the Jewish order of sopherim,- 
or scribes ; men who in the next two centuries became a 
dominant class in the Jewish state, oral interpreters and 
teachers of the law, the men whom, with the Pharisees, 
we fiind in the New Testament ''sitting on Moses' seat" 
(cf. Matt, xxiii) and busied with legal questions. There is a 
Talmudic tradition — not historically verifiable — of a '' Great 
Synagogue " of scribes, scholars, and clergy, whose first 
president was Ezra, and whose avowed function in the cul- 
tural life of Israel was briefly summed up in three prescripts : 
" Be careful in pronouncing judgment ; make many disciples ; 
set a hedge about the law." ^ One may be uncertain about 
the formal establishing of such a ''Great Synagogue" — 
like a sort of Westminster Assembly — so soon after Ezra's 
advent in Jerusalem ; but the cultural object proposed in 
these rabbinical precepts became a very prominent element 
of the new Judaism, its spirit surviving unabated to this 
day. This noble manual of instruction, brought so timely 
out of the storied past, must thenceforth, as was felt, be 
cherished, elucidated, made familiar to all classes, yet rever- 
ently hedged about, almost like an object of worship, lest 
any profanation or fault be suffered to invade it. Such at 
least was the pious yet rigid treatment of it, as centuries 
went on, at the hands of scribes, priests, and rabbis. With 
this as their main textbook, these learned orders became 
the practical arbiters of Judaism. By such means Ezra, the 
"ready scribe in the law of Moses," came to rank as the 
second great lawgiver of the nation, the man whose scholar- 
ship made the ancient statutes viable for later conditions of 
religion and life. 

1 Hunter, " After the Exile," Vol. II, p. 293. 
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THE PURITAN ERA AND ITS LITERATURE 

II, Legalism and its Austerities 

It will be remembered that the Jewish people, with whose 
literary history our Book II is dealing, are called "The 

People of a Book," ^ — the book in question 
Horizon being the Old Testament Scripture as a whole. 

Seemingly jjp ^q ^^q ^jj^e of the scribes the materials for 

that book had been accumulating, in the more 
or less occasional utterances of prophets, poets, and sages ; 
but toward the organic fusion of these into the unity of a 
canon, or library,^ no definite steps had yet been taken. In 
the stage of Biblical development to which we have now 
reached the reason for this is apparent. Ezra's completed 
law of Moses, which both for its chronological significance 
and its paramount importance must needs stand at the head 
of such a canon, had just come to its own. Its speedy 
effect was, so to say, to precipitate and crystallize into form 
the Jewish religion and thought. Thenceforth its body of 
priestly and civic ordinances preempted the main regard of 
the cultured classes, so that its austere influence drew in the 
Jewish mind from its prophetic aspirations and destinies to 
a Puritanic regime of ecclesiastical law. It is to the somber 
dominance of this influence, prevailing through centuries of 
the scanty history from the times of Ezra and Nehemiah 
onward, that by modern scholars the name has been given, 
"the night of legalism." 

I 

The Jewish Mind and Mood. Note here that we are using 
the term "Jewish." We have reached the point where this 
distinctively applies. It is the Jew, the representative of the 
leading tribe, rather than the more liberal Israelite or the 
more primitive Hebrew that we have mainly in mind ; for we 
have entered the atmosphere of matured and self-sufficient 

1 See above, pp. 251-253. 2 ^s outlined above, pp. 12-20. 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

Judaism, with its definitive qualities good and bad. Do not 
infer, however, that these quahties are engendered by the 
discipHne of this imported law. A fair consideration of the 
noble Mosaic code with its attendant history disproves this. 
We must take into account the native Jewish mind and 
mood, as we have already noted its tendencies, and as 
events wrought to determine its attitude. 

Some very concrete strokes of national experience, in 
fact, tended to set and harden the mood of the Jewish 
A Sh d clergy in their zealous enforcement of scribal law. 
by Conflicts Chief among these, perhaps, the first at least, 
an ven s ^^^ ^-^q conflict rising out of the marriage situa- 
tion. Malachi, in prophetic vein, had scored the Jewish 
nobility for their treachery in deserting the wives of their 
youth for the sake of desirable foreign alliances (Mai. ii, 
10-16) } Ezra, coming with the stern ideas of racial purity 
engendered in an alien land, began his work by exacting 
an oath from priests and Levites to put away their foreign 
wives (Ezra x, 5-17). Nehemiah, coming back from Baby- 
lon for his second term as governor (cf. Neh. xiii, 6), added 
his civil power to clear the Temple courts of all foreign 
taint, an act at the bottom of which lay numerous cases 
of marriage with Gentiles, notably such an alliance with a 
member of the High Priestly family (Neh. xiii, 1-9 ; 23-31). 
A son of the High Priest, who was son-in-law to Sanballat, 
the governor of Samaria, he chased from his presence 
(Neh. xiii, 28). The sequel is not told in Scripture ; but 
from Josephus^ we learn that the degraded priest, with a 
considerable following of priests and Levites who had married 
Gentile women, escaped to Samaria, where his father-in-law 
enabled him to set up a rival Temple and worship on Mount 
Gerizim, — the cultus to which the woman of Samaria 

1 See above, p. 365. 

2 Josephus, "Antiquities," xi, 8, 2; Hunter, "After the Exile," Vol. II, 
chap. XV. 

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THE PURITAN ERA AND ITS LITERATURE 

belonged (John iv, 20-22) and the remnants of which exist 
to this day. This withdrawal of priests greatly confirmed 
the tendency of the Jews to racial exclusiveness and pride. 
All this reacted on the temper of leaders and people, 
enhancing their zealous regard for the law of Moses ; it 
increased also a tendency, already native to the Jewish mind, 
to make their cultus too mechanical and meticulous, as 
we see by the way the law was handled by the scribes 
and Pharisees of Jesus' time. A state of things this, very 
different from the friendliness to strangers and sojourners 
enjoined in this very law itself (cf. Lev. xix, 33 ; Num. xv, 
14-16 ; Deut. X, 18, 19) ; different too from the ideal urged 
by the prophets that Israel should be a people hospitable, 
beloved, attractive.^ The larger Israel spoke in these ; it is 
Judaism that speaks now in tones of a religion that is becom- 
ing congealed in rites and ceremonies and that is hardening 
into orthodoxy, exclusiveness, intolerance. 

Not only in the austere circles of the Temple clergy and 

the scribes but among the people at large this matured 

spirit of Judaism produced momentous effects 

an Atmos^^ both good and bad. To name this I have chosen 

phere of a modern term ; the thing was just as real and 
Legalism . . . , . -^ • ^ 1 t^ • 

pervasive in ancient times as it is to-day. It is 
'' what the novelists call atmosphere, that emotional and 
social fluid which holds the separate social atoms in solu- 
tion." ^ Not only in word and oath but in unforced opinion 
and sentiment the general response to Ezra's Mosaic' law 
was hearty, eager, loyal. Further, this popular response 
seems to have been not to something entirely new, for the 
people recognized and reverenced it as the genuine law 
'of Moses, but as something which, till then only vaguely 
apprehended, had now come to common appreciation and 
understanding. It is hard to see how this remarkable effect 

1 Cf. above, pp. 329, 330. 

2 Quoted from a recent literary review. 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

could have been brought about unless we adopt some such 
explanation as that urged by Professor Edouard Naville,i 
who holds that Ezra's work as *' a ready scribe in the law of 
Moses " was to translate (or transcribe) the Mosaic statutes 
from the cuneiform in which they were originally written 
into the literary language of Palestine, which was Aramaic, 
and that the school of the scribes, his helpers, gave oral 
interpretations in the Judaic speech, the dialect of Jerusalem 
and its environs. This seems borne out by the manner in 
which the law was read and interpreted, Neh. viii, 4 to 8, 
where of the scribes who accompanied Ezra it is said, 
" They read in the book, in the law of God, distinctly 
(literally, ''with an interpretation"), and they gave the sense, 
so that they understood the reading" (Neh. viii, 8). If his 
view is correct, we have here a striking parallel to what 
took place in Germany by Luther's translation of the Bible 
and in England by the translations culminating in the King 
James version. The Bible, by being translated into every- 
day language, was made a common people's book, and the 
popular response followed. So it seems to have been in 
the years following Ezra, The law was, as it were, released 
from its formal and academic prison and through the work 
of the scribes became a popular educative factor. It is no 
wonder then that it created an atmosphere of legalism which 
permeated to all classes. The people breathed and thought 
and felt in the idiom of torah, of instruction, of law. 

Do not imagine this atmosphere of legalism as a medium 
rnerely of pedantry and formal dignity and dreary scribal 
distinctions. There was plenty of this, to be sure, especially 

1 Professor Naville's views, with the arguments b) which they are set« 
forth, are given in " The Text of the Old Testament," being the Schweich 
lectures for 191 5. The part relating more especially to Ezra's services and 
influence begins at page 65, but as Professor Naville goes over the whole 
field from the beginning it is needless to say his book necessitates an 
entire revision of the current ideas of the Higher Criticism relating to 
the origin of the early Old Testament writings. 

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THE PURITAN ERA AND ITS LITERATURE 

in the academic and magisterial circles, and it produced both 
its dogmatisms and its reactions. But, as we have seen, the 
Enter, the word torah, which our word "law" only inade- 
Pedagogue quately renders, had a much more genial and 
liberal connotation ; it meant a prime asset of the inner 
life, round every aspect of which (as seen in its wealth of 
synonyms) the piety and affections of the people could 
cluster. '*Ye shall therefore keep my statutes, and mine 
ordinances ; which if a man do, he shall live in them : 
I am Jehovah" (Lev. xviii, 5 ; cf. Ezek. xx, 1 1 ; Rom. x, 5 ; 
Gal. iii, 12), — such was its essential sanction, felt by all. 
It was accepted not only as the law of the Temple but as 
the law of the heart. This we can see from the way it 
entered into the Hebrew sacred poetry : into such Psalms 
as the first, which describes the blessedness of the godly 
observer ; as the nineteenth, which sets its inwardness side 
by side with the energizing power of the sun and the 
heavens ; as the one hundred and nineteenth, an elaborate 
acrostic poem one hundred and seventy-six verses long, every 
one of which contains, with devout ascriptions of praise, 
some synonym for the divinely given torah. Such was its 
good influence, far outweighing its austerities. We are not 
to judge its pervasive effects merely by the way it was 
handled by the scribes and Pharisees of Jesus' time. Its 
legalism was to a fundamental degree the legalism of some- 
thing that was felt' to be '' holy and just and good " 
(cf. Rom. vii, 12). 

Note. One can see how thoroughly the spirit of a devout legalism 
had permeated the finer mind of the people by noting the wealth of 
synonyms introduced into this Psalm cxix. The acrostic form of this 
Psalm, being apparently the form adopted by Hebrew writers for espe- 
cially weighty and finished verse, is of course very characteristic; but 
even niore intimately so is the continual recurrence of the words "law," 
"testimonies." "precepts," "statutes," "commandments," "word," 
"judgments," "ordinances," all these attributed direcdy to the mind 
of God. 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

The zeal and diligence of scribes and rabbis through this 
Puritan era to make the law viable prompts to a further 
remark about its ultimate function. They builded better 
than they knew. We have seen how prophecy, ranging 
through conditions and crises to come, focused in a Per- 
sonage, who was to be a Prince of peace, an Ensign of. 
the peoples, a Davidic Shepherd and King, yet a self- 
sacrificed Servant of Jehovah, at whom kings would shut 
their mouth. To point the way to him was the supreme 
function of prophecy. What of the supreme function of 
law } Was it the end of ordered life, or a means to the 
end .? Its use at the hands of its multitude of teachers as 
a working-tool for righteousness suggests the answer, which, 
indeed, in another way coincides with the grand solution of 
prophecy. Law is essentially unfinal, — not an end but a 
means. Teachers of rules and bans are not for the adult 
and self -directive but for minors and immature, — for such 
as have not reached the ripeness of character prophesied 
by Jeremiah (cf. Jer. xxxi, 34). St. Paul, whose interpre- 
tation of the function of law was fundamental, takes this 
view of it. '*The law," he says, "is become our tutor — 
our pedagogue — to bring us unto Christ, that we might 
be justified by faith " ; that is, cease to be minors and 
schoolboys, having reached our majority in self-mastery 
(Gal. iii, 24; cf. iv, 1-5 ; Eph. iv, 13, 14). With him, of 
course, that means Christian inwardness and adultness. Thus 
in the great Biblical movement law and prophecy are set 
to a wonderful teamwork looking to the same end. And 
the creation of a diffused atmosphere, a pervasive sentiment 
and veneration, by which men are subconsciously controlled, 
is its capital contribution to the promotion of this end. So 
the atmosphere of legalism, in this good sense, is a healthy 
atmosphere, as far as it goes. 

With this estimate of Judaism duly in mind, we are ready 
to consider the literature characteristic of what we have called 

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THE PURITAN ERA AND ITS LITERATURE 

the Puritan era. Let us begin with its main Hterary factor, 
which, though not the creation of this era, is its most 
influential heritage. 

II 

The Completed Pentateuch. As designating the book that 
Ezra brought up with him from Babylon, we have thus 
far assumed merely the Biblical name, " the book of the 
law of Moses, which Jehovah had commanded to Israel " 
(cf. Neh. viii, i). It was indeed that, but it was more. 
The law in its more specific sense, as being the first ele- 
ment applied to conditions in Jerusalem, was at once recog- 
nized as the book's characterizing feature. But along with 
its various codes (for there were several) were given detailed 
accounts of its origin, motive, and occasion, a spacious 
historical setting in fact, beginning with primitive and patri- 
archal times and extending continuously to the death of 
Moses. In other words, it is quite certain that Ezra's book 
was the completed Pentateuch, or five books of Moses, 
which the Jews later called ''the five fifths of the law." 

Note. The name " Pentateuch " (from Greek penfa^ pente, " five," 
and teuchos, lit. "tool" or ''implement," later "book"), which was 
adopted by Christian scholars as early as Tertullian and Origen, merely 
recognizes the first five books of the Bible as the Jews did in their 
"five fifths of the law." The word has been supplanted in modern 
critical scholarship by the term " Hexateuch " {hex, hexa\ the Book of 
Joshua being added on account of its source relations, similar to those of 
the Pentateuch. For the legal and literary relations, however, the five- 
book division, ending with the completed Law and the death of the great 
Lawgiver and Prophet^ yields a more natural and logical classification. 

The book that Ezra brought from Babylon, functioning 
as the completed Law of Moses, was not so much a new 
book as a new edition adapted to new needs and uses. 
From unknown periods its component parts had been in 
the making ; had responded in their times to contemporary 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

conditions and produced contemporary effects. That is why 
its new effect in Ezra's time was so pronounced and imme- 
ti n of ^i^te. It struck, so to speak, fhe native chord 
Sources and of Judaism, in harmony with its deep national 
Authorship gpjj-j^ ^^^ j^^g^^ Hence its power to act from 

that time forth as an organic whole, a potent and unitary 
factor in the cultural life of the Jews. 

The evident fact, however, that its subject matter is so 
composite, with peculiar traits of style differentiating its 
various parts, has in modern times wrought to obscure its 
unitary and homogeneous effect. The Pentateuch problem, 
with its prevailing assumption that Moses was not the author 
of any part of it, has in his place put numerous theories 
and conjectures of sources, dates, authors, redactors, and 
the like, theories the exploitation of which has produced a 
prodigious amount of ink-shed. This problem was the first 
and perhaps greatest battleground of the so-called Higher 
Criticism ; for which reason we cannot well evade it, though 
it concerns us only indirectly. Some of its results will 
remain, whether they will bulk so large as once seemed 
likely or not. Now that the battle has passed on to other 
issues we need only remark here that it is rather an academic 
than a vital matter, dealing with externalities of the like of 
which the people of Ezra's time, to whom the completed 
Law first came, had not the smallest heed or conception. 
To them this history, with its venerable covenants and its 
motived ordinances, was as if the voice of the great Law- 
giver himself were sounding across the centuries to them. 
Accordingly their book meant infinitely more to them than 
if they had been critically minded. They thought and acted 
as if their ancient records were authentic. It did not occur 
to them to call things in question. 

Nor had it so occurred to Ezra. So far as appears, his 
work was not creative and original but editorial, the work 
of the scholar and scribe. In dealing with his composite 

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THE PURITAN ERA AND ITS LITERATURE 

material his was the genius of selection, coordination, pro- 
portion, and on the whole we cannot forbear to call it mas- 
terly. It is his distinction to have unearthed and assembled 
these divers deposits of story, genealogy, ritual, statistic, and 
statute, and to have fused them together into a single con- 
tinuous narrative, a motived and organized history; Of this 
work no trait is more conspicuous than his conscientious 
fidelity to the integrity of his sources, his care to reproduce 
the ancient writings just as they were, without attempting 
to reconcile discrepancies or determine degrees of authen- 
ticity. That is why they preserve their old-time flavor, why, 
indeed, modern students can dissect them at all. 

Note. Several general subjects relating to the formative period of 
the Biblical literature, already discussed, derive their significance for the 
most part from the stories of the Pentateuch, How that literature reflects 
the genius of a specially gifted race we have considered, pp. 31-33. 
What inherited fund of ideas the Israelites had on their entrance to 
Canaan we have traced in outline, pp. 46-56. What main lines of 
source story, with their alleged elements of folk tale, myth, and legend, 
are held by modern scholars to underlie the early Biblical narratives, 
we have discussed, pp. 109-123. See also pp. 70, 71. 

Without going into the conjectural minutiae of the Penta- 
teuch problem we may note two strains of literary treatment 
rather intimately blended together yet quite clearly 
strain Separable. These are largely represented, espe- 

Merged cially before the deliverance from Egypt, in the 

different elements of source story already out- 
lined.^ In the first, which flows along in artless and limpid 
personal narrative, we trace the so-called Jehovistic and 
Elohistic elements, which for our purpose may be regarded 
as one underlying tissue. In the second, wherein the treat- 
ment is more formal and systematic, we trace the so-called 
Priestly and Deuteronomic elements, which, true to the schol- 
arly impulse, are concerned with ordered historical annals, 

1 See above, pp; 109-114. 
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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

with their scribal framework of chronology, genealogy, tabula- 
tion, and the like. The difference between these two lines of 
treatment doubtless goes back to their respective derivations 
from oral and written sources, the latter probably being largely 
cuneiform, as was the ancient manner of permanent record. 

Note. For remarks on the distinction between the spoken and the 
written elements of BibHcal tradition, see above, pp. 13-16. An outline 
sketch of the Pentateuch story is given above, on pages 108, 109. 

Let us note, in some leading features of these two strains, 
how they interact with each other to form the literary tissue 
identified with the mind of Moses. 

In the underlying current of J and E narratives leading 
up to the covenant at Sinai we read the simple ideas of 
p _„ primitive and patriarchal life, before the period 

Web of Per- of Organic law and cultus was inaugurated, and 
sona tory ^j^jjg ^g yg^ human nature was, as it were, explor- 
ing the rudiments of custom and character. As to style, 
this line of narrative, meant for common people, is pitched 
in the folk tone adapted to the common mind, and as to 
substance, it moves among domestic and family affairs. 
Beginning (Gen. ii) with the primitive conjugal pair and 
their spiritual equipment for life, it narrates their ominous 
and doubtful outset, 

Life's business being just the terrible choice, 

and the lawless conduct, through generations, of their head- 
strong offspring (Adam to Noah) ; goes onward through the 
experiences of a family line steadied and elevated by a high 
motive and loyalty (Abraham and the patriarchs) ; until at 
length we find them, a goodly circle of tribal chiefs, receiving 
the dying blessing of their father, the grandson of Abraham. 
Here the web of familiar story is broken for a period of 
some four hundred and thirty years (cf. Ex. xii, 40), and 
resumed in a less continuous way. This whole pre-Mosaic 
line is full of native simplicity and charm, with a haunting 

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THE PURITAN ERA AND ITS LITERATURE 

symbolism, as it were a lesson without the pose of the 
teacher, in every event. I have called it personal because 
for the most part it centers in notable personages, a succes- 
sion of ancient worthies, whose lives were pivotal for the 
normal and wholesome progress of mankind. Not that they 
are set up as models ; their personality is portrayed in its 
native worth and weakness, its spiritual clearness and dim- 
ness, as it reacts on the inner issues of life. In a beadroll 
of these worthies drawn up by a New Testament writer 
(see Heb. xi) the common motive and ideal that actuated all 
their lives, giving a noble meaning to this line of biography, 
is named faith, and honored as a sturdy confidence and 
courage which girded them to press onward toward their 
soul's home (cf. Heb. xi, 14) without attaining, yet without 
flinching. We need not try to better this interpretation. 
It names the stimulating and refining power that one feels 
in reading these stories of the early Semitic world. It is 
the forward reach of an aspiring humanity. 

Closely inwoven from the beginning with this web of 
personal story, and supplementary of it, are sections and 

passages in another vein and coloring, to which 
Material into sections has been given the name of the Priestly 
Historic element (P). Why so called will appear later. 

This element bears the marks of the scholar and 
scribe. Its style is to a degree grave and formal, the finest 
specimen of it being the first chapter of Genesis, whose 
sublimity is rather of the subject matter than of the style. 
Through the rest of this book, however, this element is 
quite intercalary, supplying as it does the chronological and 
genealogical framework on which the web of story is unfolded. 
In the Book This function of it is made a marked feature. 
of Genesis Introduced at the fitting chronological intervals 
it goes according to a series of '' generations " {toledoth, lit. 
''begettings "), which, beginning on the cosmic scale of the 
heavens and the earth, gradually draw in the created masses 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

of humanity from their world-wide distribution to the Semitic 
stock, and to the Hebrew family of which Abraham was 
the ancestral type ; ending with the tribal chiefs begotten by 
Jacob-Israel, Abraham's distinguished grandson. Thus is 
laid the foundation, so to say, of the chosen race with which 
the whole Old Testament has to do ; " who are Israelites, 
whose is the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, 
and the giving of the law, and the service, and the promises ; 
whose are the fathers, and" — not to omit the New Testa- 
ment share — '' of whom is Christ as concerning the flesh " 
(Rom. ix, 4, 5). The whole Biblical basis is laid here. 

Note. The following is the notation of the concentrative " gen- 
erations " : 

Gen. ii, 4. " These are the generations of the heavens and of the 
earth when they were created, in the day that Jehovah God made earth 
and heaven." 

Gen, v, I. " This is the book of the generations of Adam." 

Gen. vi, 9. " These are the generations of Noah." 

Gen. X, I. " Now these are the generations of the sons of Noah." 

Gen. xi, 10. " These are the generations of Shem." 

Gen. xi, 27. " Now these are the generations of Terah, Terah 
begat Abram," etc. 

Gen. XXV, 12. "Now these are the generations of Ishmael, Abra- 
ham's son, whom Hagar the Egyptian, Sarah's handmaid, bare unto 
Abraham." 

Gen. XXV, 19. "And these are the generations of Isaac, Abra- 
ham's son." 

Gen. xxxvi, i. " Now these are the generations of Esau (the same 
is Edom)." 

Gen. xxxvi, 9. "And these are the generations of Esau, the father 
of the Edomites in Mount Seir." 

Gen. xxxvii, 2. " These are the generations of Jacob." 

It will be observed that in two cases collateral lines are introduced 
(Ishmael, Edom), lines with which the Israelites were closely related in 
kindred and location. To these may be added, in less formal mention, 
the sons of Lot, Abraham's nephew, from whom came the Moabites 
and Ammonites (xix, 37) ; the line of Nahor, Abraham's brother, whence 
came Isaac's wife Rebekah (xxii, 20-24); and the sons of Keturah, 
Abraham's second wife (xxv, 1-4). 

[396] 



4 



THE PURITAN ERA AND ITS LITERATURE 

The legendary^ stories of primitives and patriarchs, as 
told in Genesis, to which the scribal framework of genealogy 
has given a loose historical sequence, are after all only the 
vestibule to Ezra's Pentateuch history. As such, however, 
they are to be fairly reckoned with, not discarded as pre- 
historic as is the manner of some. Though not of a nature 
to be verified by official documents, they portray the sterling 
Hebrew soul, the racial principle from which the later Jewish 
people derived name and pride of race and persistency 
of inner freedom (cf. John viii, 33). And this is much; is, 
indeed, what makes the succeeding history possible. These 
engaging stories are not to be deemed prehistoric ; rather, 
they throb with the nerve, the vigor, the native spirit of the 
history that with the deliverance from Egypt is wakened 
to open movement. 

Accordingly, with this pre-Mosaic approach made, the rest 
of the Pentateuch, from the opening of the Book of Exodus 
In the F r inward, recounts this mogientous period of history 
Succeeding in a single unbroken narrative. In saying this 
^ ® we do not forget that the Books of Leviticus and 

Deuteronomy belong to the compiler's scheme. In his sense 
of literary values the moving and vivid elements dear to the 
story-teller are not dissociable from the clerkly details habit- 
ual to the scribe. All is fish that comes to Ezra's priestly 
and scholarly net. Details of all sorts — genealogy, tribal 
organization, tabernacle and its furnishing, dedicatory serv- 
ice, itineraries — are catalogued in full wherever they belong 
in the story ; while the story itself, its events and incidents 
varying in amount and frequency, is always more or less in 
sight to give the sense of a living background. Thus the 
law which Ezra brought from Babylon for the uses of his 
generation was not a cut-and-dried code but the report of a 
series of Ism-^tvm^s, with the circumstances in each case 

1 The warrant for using the word " legendary " may be gathered from 
what is said above, pp. ii8, 119. 

[397] 



GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

narrated ; whether by the audible voice of God (cf . Ex. xx, 
22), by Jehovah's words engraved on stone tablets (xxxi, i8 ; 
xxxiv, i), by directions received from God and given out 
from a '' tent of meeting " (xxxiii, 7 ; xxxiv, 34 ; Lev. i, i), 
or by the aged lawgiver's resume of his people's experience 
and its avails made as a farewell address and recorded in a 
book for preservation (Deut. i, 3 ; xxxi, 24-26). In each 
case the legislation was made impressive by its occasion, by 
the circumstances holy, awesome, sublime, which connected 
the substance of the law with the mind of God. Thus also 
it came about that the word once given did not become 
obsolete, that laws and ordinances purporting to have been 
made for a wilderness people, for nomads with a settled 
home only in promise and worshiping in a portable sanctu- 
ary, were received centuries after as valid for all time and 
applied to the refined uses of government and Temple. 
The rugged lesson of their ancient history, accepted by a 
people to whom history dkvas prophetic, became thenceforth 
the sacred law of life. 

Note. It is taken as an assured result of modern criticism that the 
various stages of the Mosaic Law were the product of a historic develop- 
ment extending through ages of national life ; of which development 
the Book of Deuteronomy represents a stage dating from about Manas- 
seh's time and adapted to conditions prevailing during Josiah's reign, 
when the book was found in the Temple ; ^ and the Book of. Leviticus 
represents the latest stage, a code of legislation designed and adapted 
to the Priestly uses of the Second Temple and the Jewish hierarchical 
state. • That is to say, by modern scholarship the origin of the law is 
closely connected in time with its publication and administration. How 
this affects Ezra's estimate of his sources, not to say the good faith of 
his report, we leave here undiscussed ; it is not our problem. His ac- 
count of the matter, however, with which we are here concerned, derives 
the Law in its various stages from the masterly mind of Moses, or rather 
from Jehovah through Moses as mediator ; he makes it all, accordingly, 
the product of that single generation of '' trial in the wilderness " when 
Israel was on the way to Canaan. 

1 See " The Book Found in the Temple," pp. 220-228, above. 

[398] 



THE PURITAN ERA AND ITS LITERATURE 

The Pentateuchal grouping of the laws seems to fall under the 
events of three places or occasions, each with its historical situation 
to correspond. 

1. Lev. xxvii, 34. "These are the commandments which Jehovah 
commanded Moses for the children of Israel in Mount Sinai." Under 
these is comprised the main body of the first legislation. It begins with 
the *' Ten words," a mnemonic epitome of moral obligation, spoken 
under very sublime and impressive circumstances from the cloud at 
Sinai and afterward written upon stone (Ex. xx, 1-21 = Deut. v, 4-23). 
To these were added, as given to Moses on the same occasion, certain 
"ordinances" or "judgments" (xxi-xxiii, 19), principles of common 
law as between "a man and his brother" (cf. Deut. i, 16), which ordi- 
nances were solemnly agreed to and ratified by the people (xxiv, 3-8). 
Following upon this, while Moses was alone with God forty days and 
forty nights, and Aaron and the priests were waiting outside the cloud, 
were the directions given for building and furnishing the tabernacle 
(xxv-xxx) " according to the pattern shown in the mount " (xxv, 40 ; 
cf. Heb. viii, 5). Then after the account of the building of the taber- 
nacle has intervened (xxxv-xl), the Levitical ordinances, relating to 
both worship and civic administration, are given by Moses from th'e 
" tent of meeting " (Lev. i-xxvii). 

2. Num. xxxvi, 13. "These are the commandments and the ordi- 
nances which Jehovah commanded by Moses unto the children of Israel 
in the plains of Moab by the Jordan at Jericho." This seems to refer 
to the various ordinances and statutes made for the emergencies of the 
turbulent wilderness experience of a newly emancipated people during 
forty years of wandering, laws rising out of new occasions and admin- 
istered by Moses as magistrate. 

3. Deut. i, I. "These are the words which Moses spake unto all 
Israel beyond the Jordan in the wilderness." Comprised in the Book 
of Deuteronomy, these " words " are the wonderful farewell of Moses 
to his people, in which by a series of hortatory addresses, like the 
counsels of a father to children, he epitomizes their wilderness history 
(i-iii) ; recounts in popular form the statutes and ordinances that condi- 
tion a loyal and orderly life, in the fear of God and in the wise art of 
living with others (v-xxx) ; and ends with a song (xxxii) and a blessing 
(xxxiii) ; after which, as bidden by Jehovah, he climbs Mount Nebo and, 
dying, is buried by Jehovah in an unknown sepulcher (xxxiv, 5, 6). 

Thus in this closing book are gathered the legal, historical, and 
spiritual values of the whole Pentateuch, giving it a noble unity and 
purpose. It has already been characterized as " one of the most potent 
and far-reaching books of all time." See above, p. 227. 

[399] 



GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

Let us now try to sum up briefly the permanent signifi- 
cance of this Pentateuch, that literary merger of old-time 
stories and lessons which, brought from the scribal work- 
shops of Chaldea to Jerusalem, marked by its loyal adoption 
the birthday of a matured Judaism.^ What is the source of 
its power ? what its ruling idea ? 

The Pentateuch as a whole is a pivotal product. On it 
the literary and spiritual values of the past turn to become 
rI^v. ^ J, values of the future. It deals with the vital 

The End 

in the elements that lie at the roots of manhood being. 

Beginning f hat is why it stands at the head of the Hebrew 
canon ; why in the Bible as a record of inner development 
it should be read first.^ Drawing from the rude conditions 
of primeval, patriarchal, and nomadic life, its completion 
comes to a nation long conversant with the civilized and 
religious customs of the world. Nor only that : it will be 
remembered that their prophetic movement was over, with 
its literary results available, and when their recognition of 
historical records from Moses onward was at least in the 
making.^ Underneath all this Ezra's .book lays, as it were, 
a foundation, supplying the substructure of venerable tradi- 
tion in its stages of growth from inchoate relations to a 
law of life adapted to all spiritual and communal needs 
(cf. Lev. xviii, 5; Ezek. xx, 11 ; Gal. iii, 12). Viewed in 
this light the Pentateuch reads less like an austere code of 
law than like a living epic. It was with some such feeling, 
I think, that the people of Ezra's time gave fervent alle- 
giance to it. In some ways it was stern and uncompromis- 
ing ; had to be for a people so stiff-necked as the Israelites 
always were (cf. Ex. xxxiii, 3, 5 ; Isa. xlviii, 4) ; in some 
things too it left unerased the crude and cruel relics of an 
outworn past (cf., for instance, Deut. vii, i, 2 ; xx, 17). But 
through it all runs a felt current of gracious purpose ; and 
over it, felt especially in the culminating book Deuteronomy, 

1 See above, p. 381. * Cf. above, p. 20. ^ See above, p. 377. 

I 400 ] 



THE PURITAN ERA AND ITS LITERATURE 

hovers like a father's benediction the mighty personaUty of 
Moses, the most ChristUke figure of the Old Testament (of. 
Ex. xxxii, 32 ; Num. xii, 3 ; Deut. xxxiv, 10). One can realize 
this vividly as one reads his words : '' Behold, I have taught 
you statutes and ordinances, even as Jehovah my God com- 
manded me, that ye should do so in the midst of the land 
whither ye go in to possess it. Keep therefore and do 
them ; for this is your wisdom and your understanding in 
the sight of the peoples, that shall hear all these statutes, 
and say, ' Surely this great nation is a wise and understand- 
ing people.' For what great nation is there, that hath a 
god so nigh unto them, as Jehovah our God is whensoever 
we call upon him } And what great nation is there that 
hath statutes and ordinances so righteous as all this law, 
which I set before you this day.?" (Deut. iv, 5-8). There 
was a power in this law, both personal and institutional, 
which the nation could neither ignore nor outgrow. It came 
to them as a lure of manhood. 

What then was its ruling idea, the nucleal beginning in 
which lay the power of the end ? We look at its central 
ordinance, that digest of commandments th^t can be counted 
on the ten fingers ^ (the '*Ten words," Ex. xx, Deut. v), 
and at first thought they look like mere prohibitions, what 
not to do. But do they not thereby do human nature the 
honor of taking for granted that men, the negative barriers 
removed, will go on to do the positive good of their own 
motion } That is how Moses seems to regard it when, after 
his Deuteronomic recounting of the ten words, he goes on 
to give its spiritual appeal in its attitude toward God. '' Hear, 
O Israel," he says; ''the Lord our God, the Lord is one. 
And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, 
and with all thy soul, and with all thy might " ^ (Deut. vi, 4). 
He resolves it into a commandment of love, — a positive 

1 See above, p. 55. 

2 I use here the wording of the Jewish " new translation," 1917. 

[ 401 ] 



GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

relation only possible to the inner life. It will be remembered 
that our Lord, on being asked for the " great command- 
ment," takes this up as the first and then, with hearty 
approval from his hearer, adds its complement (''like unto 
it ") the commandment of love to neighbor, enlarged to 
universal application from Leviticus xix, i8 : ''Thou shalt 
not take vengeance, nor bear any grudge against the chil- 
dren of thy people, but thou shalt love thy neighbor as 
thyself "1 (cf. Matt, xxii, 34-40; Mark xii, 28-31 ; Luke x, 
25-28). Such is the end already germinal in the beginning : 
the law of love enjoined on man in the magnificent faith 
that it is in him to love. The summary given by Jesus 
made it a supreme truth of Scripture teaching. " On these 
two commandments," he said, "the whole law hangeth, and 
the prophets " (Matt, xxii, 40). The response he received, 
too, acknowledged such love, Godward and manward, as 
"much more than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices" 
(Mark xii, 33). Nor should we omit St. Paul's tribute to 
the second table of the law in Romans xiii, 8-10 : " Love 
worketh no ill to his neighbor ; love therefore is the fulfil- 
ment of the law." Whatever more it does, the positive 
good will insures the negative abstinence from ill. 

Note. The germ of this highest reach of law and life is traceable, 
far back of the commandments, to the first created man, — a truth 
which has been needlessly obscured by the usurping notion of original 
sin and its resulting ruin. When God, who is love (i John iv, 8, r6), 
created man in His own image, He endowed that likeness with that 
freedom of intelligent will and choice — a freedom not without tremen- 
dous risks (Gen. ii, 16-17) — by which alone his answering love could be 
genuine ; and, as a further promotive, with that conjugal mating in 
which, by the sweetest and holiest relation, begins the potency of the 
love of kind (Gen. ii, 18-25)'. It is an outfit of liberty and union. So 
the germ and power of the far end was truly resident in that individual 
being in whom was focused the human species, and thus in the quaint 
antique phrase is portrayed a beginning full of aptness and help. 

1 See note 2 on previous page. 

[ 402 ] 



THE PURITAN ERA AND ITS LITERATURE 

III 

The Later Cultus Literature. The elements of the '' two- 
fold strain merged in one " which we have noted in Ezra's 
In the Care Pentateuchal work ^ may, for rough distinction, be 
of the Clergy called the popular and the clerical ; which is to 
say, the element that reflects personal traits and feelings, 
and the element that unfolds in religious organization. Of 
these, many things conspired after Ezra's and Nehemiah's 
activities to emphasize the latter. Centered at Jerusalem, 
with the restored Temple at once its capitol, its university, 
and its cathedral, the Jewish commonwealth was rather a 
church than a state, its cultural affairs being merged for 
the most part in the interests of the Levitical hierarchy. 
The coming of Ezra and his company of kindred scribes 
(for which latter cf. Neh. viii, 4, 7) opened in effect an era 
of leadership for the tribe of Levi, — a tribe and leadership 
essentially clerical. For this ascendancy they could claim 
a long tradition, confirmed by the literature they brought. 
The two brothers, it will be remembered, Moses the great 
prophet and lawgiver and Aaron his priestly colleague and 
helper, were of this tribe. The whole Pentateuch after Gen- 
esis is a history of their activities. Ezra the scribe traced 
his lineage to Aaron (Ezra vii, i— 5) ; and when he set out 
for Jerusalem he was careful to have a strong representa- 
tion not only of priests but of cultured laymen, "who were 
teachers," from that tribe (Ezra viii, 15, 16). Arrived at 
Jerusalem, where matters had been going at loose ends, 
these Levites, as a kind of major and minor clergy, soon 
had the cultural affairs of the nation all their own way. The 
Temple worship and administration were thoroughly organ- 
ized, with elaborate forms and ceremonies, ordered courses 
of priestly service, and a prescribed scale of Levitical duties 
from chief priest to doorkeeper. So far as one can see, the 

1 See above, p. 393. 
[ 403 ] 



GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

Jewish people, the machinery of church and state in full run- 
ning order, were content to leave religious thought in the 
care and control of the Levitical priesthood with its auxiliary 
orders of rabbis and scribes. 

Such clerical ascendancy — monopoly we may not forbear 
to call it — was bound to have its distinctive impress on the 
general literary situation. It set the intellectual pace. It was 
the main factor in creating what I have called the atmos- 
phere of legalism. 1 As such, it had the advantages and the 
limitations of clericalism. We must not, of course, deny or 
belittle the former, which for the Jewish mind and tempera- 
ment were the advantages of a fit staying and saving power. 
The Jewish genius required its definiteness, its concrete cultus 
and symbolism. But, just as with clericalism in modern 
times, we must needs reckon with its limitations. The cleri- 
cal mind, subdued to its ecclesiastical formulas, was not 
creative, not flexible and tolerant, not open to large and 
liberal vision. It tended rather to the stereotyped and estab- 
lished, to rabbinical comment rather than to literary creation. 
On the whole, then, we cannot regard the era that set in 
with the birthday of Judaism as greatly conducive to literary 
light and power. Those spiritual forces went into abeyance 
with the lapse of the prophetic spirit and, if yet to appear, 
were called forth by other influences. 

Of this period — which for its dominant legalism we have 
called the Puritan Era — the most characteristic literary prod- 
uct was a book written about a century and a half 
Chronicles: . "^ 

the Levitical after Ezra, and reflecting the cultural attitude 

^^ l^^f^^ of about three hundred years before Christ, or a 

Bluebook i ' 

. little later. That book was the Chronicles, — origi- 
nally written as a single work, and as is thought including 
also, by the same author, the memoirs of Ezra and Nehemiah 
as we have them in the books so named. The Hebrew title 
of the work, '' Events of the Times " {Dibre hayyamim), as 

1 See above, p. 387. 
[ 404 ] 



THE PURITAN ERA AND ITS LITERATURE 

also the Greek designation, " Supplements" {Paraleipomend)^ 
represents not unfitly its rank and significance in the Bibli- 
cal library. It aims to give a revised epitome of the nation's 
history as this presented itself to the modernized mind of 
a later and more developed cultus. It is evidently a product 
of the Temple scholarship and the Temple archives. From 
its undisguised interest in the Levite families and courses, 
and from its liking for the choral service, it is not unreason- 
ably thought to have been written by a cleric of the minor 
orders, a scribe, and perhaps a director of the music. That 
such a person may have been an official of distinction is 
indicated by the fact that a great many of the Psalms, the 
hymnody of this Second Temple, are by their titles con- 
signed to the care of ''the chief musician." For its final 
disposal in the Biblical canon the Book of Chronicles, like 
Ruth and Daniel,^ underwent a shift of estimate. By the 
Hebrew compilers it was placed at the very end, in the 
so-called ''writings," as if it were a kind of summary, or 
perhaps an appendix. In the Greek canon, however, which 
the modern versions follow, it was placed in the series of 
historical books, just after the Books of Kings, and read 
as a parallel history. Read in either order and estimate 
it is rewarding, from its reflection of the matured Puritan 
attitude to the past of Jewish history. 

Considered as parallel and supplemental to the earlier 
historical books (Samuel and Kings) this record of the 
Chronicles merits brief comparison with these ; we can get 
thereby at what is most characteristic in it. 

First then, it is natural to ask why, if the Hebrew story 
was already so well told, this new version of it was evidently 
deemed necessary. And the answer is that the intervening 
years had altered the cultural attitude to life, from the 
simpler-hearted Israelitish, such as had prevailed before the 
exile, to the more sophisticated Jewish, such as the Levitical 

1 Cf. above, p. 281. 
[405] 



GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

law and the Temple system had developed. One feels the 
difference in the whole tone of the book. In reading the 
Its Distinc- ^^^^^ ^^ Samuel and Kings, from whose sources 
tive Aim Chronicles got its main material, one feels the very 
an one form and pressure of the times therein portrayed ; 
one has the sense of a sterling type of religion that relies 
less on form and prescript than on native piety and faith ; 
and especially one responds to the power and charm of 
great personalities — Samuel, Saul, David, Jonathan, Elijah, 
Elisha — men of large prophetic mold. The history reveals 
itself in the natural color, rugged and sincere, unbiased by 
later interpretations. Herein the Chronicler differs materially. 
His personages do not haunt the reader's memory ; they are 
portrayed rather as related to the sanctions or penalties of 
a religious dispensation. His storied times move across a 
priestly background. The Chronicles read, in fact, like a 
history not felt but made, — a piece of scribal work, its 
moving scenes sharing indiscriminately with bald genealogies 
and statistics. And this indeed is what they are. They are 
the work of a writer who, as it would seem, could portray 
Israel's religious past only in the tone and coloring of 
organized and orthodox Judaism, — of the Judaism that had 
become mature and stereotyped since the return from exile. 
It is as if the Levitical ordinances had always set the cul- 
tural pace for the national mind. 

In noting this, let us not be unfair to the good traits of 
the book. It reflects the mind of a nation imbued with a high 
sense of the awe and sanctity of its religious symbolism. Its 
law of the sanctuary has become its law of life, — the fit ex- 
pression of that race ' ' of whom saints, fanatics, and martyrs 
are made." As a church history the Book of Chronicles is 
a sincerely religious history. Its literary tone, whenever the 
author escapes from his interminable lists of names, is emi- 
nently reverent and devout, as befits the idiom of the sanctu- 
ary. Thus it mirrors the religious standard of its age. 

[406] 



THE PURITAN ERA AND ITS LITERATURE . 

A second question here rising is, If the Chronicler sees 
his nation's past through so altered a medium, how does 
Its Handiin ^^^^ ^^^^^ affcct his treatment of historic fact ? 
of Historic In general we may answer : He does not take 
^^ conscious liberties with fact ; but neither has he 

the historian's minute care for accuracy and consistency. 
He challenges verification by frequent reference to sources 
presumably available to his readers ; sources apparently iden- 
tical, for the most part, with those from which the material 
of the Books of Kings was drawn.^ His method with them 
is selection of such facts as make for his purpose and let- 
ting the rest go, without care for the effect of the omission. 
On the whole his work does not rise to the historical value 
of the Books of Kings, though for matters connected with 
the cultus we should allow for its clerical author's familiarity 
with Temple traditions and archives, on which he draws for 
the real inwardness of his essentially religious history. 

We are to remember, however, the comparative restric- 
tion of his range and purpose. His history is not so much 
a rival of the earlier one as a filled-out department of it. 
Written long after the northern kingdom had ceased to 
exist, its secular narrative is concerned only with the south- 
ern, the kingdom of Judah, or more specifically with the 
fortunes of the Davidic, which is to say the Judean, dynasty, 
from its founder David to its last member Zedekiah, under 
whom the people were deported and made servants '' until 

1 This is not saying that he drew directly from the Books of Kings as 
we have them, but only that the two authors (or schools) drew as they 
needed from the same repository of sources. Two of the Chronicler's 
references to authorities, however, are significant. In 2 Chron. xiii, 22, he 
refers to " the commentary [A. V. " story," Heb. midrash'\ of the prophet 
Iddo " ; and in xxiv, 27, similarly to "the commentary of the book of the 
Kings." This indicates, what we know otherwise, that in his time there 
was current a class of literature called in Hebrew midrask, whose aim 
was exposition of the historical and prophetic writings in possession. 
The whole Book of Chronicles, apart from its abundant statistics, is 
largely midrashic, — an explanation of history rather than the history itself. 

[ 407 ] 



. GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

the land had enjoyed its sabbaths. For as long as it lay 
desolate it kept sabbath, to fulfil threescore and ten years " 
(2 Chron. xxxvi, 21). This quoted passage shows the essen- 
tially Levitical interpretation that underlies the whole account ; 
it is history in the light of Mosaic law. The secular side, 
however, is not the writer's main line. He wrote at a time 
when, as has been described, ''Jerusalem had ceased to be 
the head of an independent state and had become merely 
' a municipality governed by a church.' " ^ It is in the 
church, or in other words the Temple, — its history, its 
liturgy, its ritual, — that his interest centers. All the facts 
that make for this are vital to his theme. The genealogies, 
for instance, and the lists of names with which the narra- 
tive abounds, are by no means superfluous ; when we note 
the lion's share devoted to the tribe of Levi, in all its 
families great and small (i Chron. vi), and in the disposition 
of these in the various grades and courses of the priestly 
and Temple service (ix, 10-34 ; xv, i-xvi, 6 ; xj^iii-xxvi), 
we become aware of his underlying design, to trace, by a 
kind of clerical succession, the priestly line from the taber- 
nacle days of Moses and Aaron, and the Temple hierarchy 
from the preliminary organization under David. It will be 
remembered that in the Books of Kings the ordinances of 
the first Temple receive very scant attention ; one cannot well 
make out how definite was the relation of the priests and how 
loyal the allegiance of the people to their heritage of tradi- 
tional law. It is this that the Chronicler aims to supply ; and 
in doing so he treats the whole Temple function as virtually 
organized and active from the time when David set up the 
tent over the recovered ark of God (cf. i Chron. xv, xvi). 
The successive histories of the kings from David onward 
are told with special emphasis on their relations to the 
sanctuary and to ritual religion. David's significance as a 
settled monarch was not in his personal or political character 

^ Chronicles, in The New Century Bible, p. 23. 
[408] 



THE PURITAN ERA AND ITS LITERATURE 

but in his choosing a site and making elaborate preparations 
for the Temple that his son was to build (i Chron. xxi, 
i8-xxix, 22) ; Solomon was less notable as the wise and 
puissant king than as the builder and consecrator of the 
Temple (2 Chron. iii-viii) ; Jehoshaphat began his military 
campaign with a Temple service of fasting and prayer 
(2 Chron. xx, 1-13); Uzziah was smitten with leprosy for 
usurping the priest's function (xxvi, 16-21); Hezekiah's 
great reform, undertaken in the first year of his reign, 
consisted in opening the Temple which his father Ahaz 
had closed (cf. xxviii, 24) and reorganizing its festival and 
sacrificial service (xxix-xxxi) ; to Josiah's reform, as told in 
2 Kings, is added a detailed account of his Temple festival 
service (xxxv, 1-19). All these supplemental accounts, the 
data of which, if authentic, could be drawn from Temple 
archives and statistics, show wherein the Chronicler's histori- 
cal interest lay, and incidentally its value in the handling 
of historical fact. 

On the whole, while this Book of Chronicles, written at 
its late day, reflects the added awe and sanctity, and per- 
haps the deepened sensitiveness to sin, belonging to the 
atmosphere of an established ritual and liturgical cultus, it 
is quite lacking in the finer and freer personal elements 
that give zest and buoyancy to life. That is why I have 
contrasted to it the personal charm that pervades the earlier 
history. Its historical judgments are, as it were, official, the 
professional verdicts of an orthodox clergy. It represents 
accordingly the mind of a people, or rather of a class, 
molded to the pattern of a dogmatic religion, with its lack 
of breadth and prophetic freedom. Its religion is, to a 
degree, stereotyped and static. We may regard it as per- 
haps the fullest reflection that the Scripture affords of what 
we have termed legalism and its austerities. Let us not 
forget, however, that such seasoned legalism, with its stur- 
diness, its rich symbolism, its consciousness of the will of 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

God, was not all austerity. Nor was its product the only 
literature available in its time. Outside the scholarly and 
clerical circles the Jewish people had a goodly store of works 
of quite different tenor, in which their thought could move 
with more genial freedom. 

Before we go on to mention these, however, we must 
needs give some further consideration to the two books 
Ezra ' Book ^hich, as already noted,^ are thought to have 
of the Puri- been originally included in the Chronicles, namely, 
tan Zealot ^^ra and Nehemiah. Much of the substance of 
Ezra has been referred to and used in our study of Ezra 
as scribe and scholar.^ We need here only to add some- 
thing about the book that bears his name, and how it fits 
into the Biblical plan. 

The Book of Ezra is essentially the continuation of the 
Book of Chronicles. There is no gap between the two. 
Beginning with the decree of Cyrus's first year, permitting 
the Jewish exiles to return to their home, the author repeats 
in full what the Chronicles, quoting at end, left in the middle 
of a sentence (Ezra i, 1-4 ; cf. 2 Chron. xxxvi, 22, 23). 
From this he goes on, in characteristic chronicler style, 
accompanying his narrative with names, numbers, documents, 
and statistics, to tell (chaps, i-vi) the story of the return, 
the setting up of the great altar, and the building of the 
Temple with its survival of difficulties, until in the year 
516 B.C. ''the children of Israel, the priests and the Levites, 
and the rest of the children of the captivity, kept the dedi- 
cation of this house of God with joy" (Ez. vi, 16). Up to 
this point the history is the priestly account, accurate no 
doubt as to externals, but conceived in the spirit of more 
than two centuries later, when the Jewish commonwealth had 
become a Jewish hierarchy. Its contrast in tone and atmos- 
phere with the writings of Haggai and Zechariah, which deal 

1 See above, p. 404. ^ gee section of that topic, pp. 379-384 above. 

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THE PURITAN ERA AND ITS LITERATURE 

with the same period, is impressive. The prophets whose 
enthusiasm had brought about the rebuilding (cf . Ezra v, i ; 
vi, 14) had predicted a house filled with Jehovah's glory 
(cf. Hag. ii, 7-9) and a land friendly and attractive to all 
outside nations (cf. Zech. ii, 11 ; viii, 20-23). In the Book 
of Ezra there is no suggestion of this state of things. The 
compiler, describing only the ceremonial aspects of the event, 
provides it with a fully organized priesthood and clergy, as 
if this had survived the captivity intact. "And they set 
the priests in their divisions," he writes, ''and the Levites 
in their courses, for the service of God, which is at Jeru- 
salem ; as it is written in the book of Moses " (Ezra vi, 18). 
Thus he assumes a cultus in complete running order as 
soon as the Temple service^ after seventy years' abeyance, 
is resumed. All this, as we see, is quite in keeping with the 
Chronicle history. It reflects a culture wherein the church 
sense has eclipsed the secular, or, in other words, has devel- 
oped a full-orbed legalism. And this result must have been 
the growth of many years of religious and educative discipline. 
It is not until fifty-eight years later, however, that Ezra, 
with his numerous company of men "who were teachers" 
(viii, 16), appears on the scene, and not until seventy-two 
years that he actually is called upon to read this " book of 
Moses" to the people (see Neh. viii). With the seventh 
chapter the distinctive Ezra narrative begins, telling of the 
letter of permission he secured from King Artaxerxes, and 
of his sense of the grace and honor thus done him. At 
this point the history incorporates the autobiographic notes 
of Ezra himself ; which notes, extending from vii, 27, to 
ix, 15, give no longer a later commentary {midrasJi) but the 
contemporary impression, the actual state of things. Of the 
laxity and insincerity into which the priestly service had by 
this time fallen a contemporary prophet, Malachi, as we 
have seen, bears indignant witness.^ Of the scandal of 

1 See above, pp. 364-366. 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

mixed marriages which must needs be dealt with before he 
could find free inlet for his book of law, Ezra's own words 
give account. His well-nigh fanatical behavior on making 
the discovery, and his too rash and drastic measures to right 
the wrong, have already been considered. ^ Such frenzied 
conduct reveals not the prophetic largeness and liberalism 
but the puritan narrowness, intent on strict obedience to 
priestly and Levitical tradition ; it awakens to a degree that 
race pride and exclusiveness which to the prophets seemed 
a danger to be watched and guarded.^ One does not feel 
^rawn to such a character ; there is lack of sympathy and 
tolerance ; it is the character of the puritan zealot. We 
ought not to dismiss it, however, without a glance at the 
other side. His autobiographic record reveals it as it were 
between the lines. It is with an outburst of tender piety, in 
his gratitude for the King's gracious decree (vii, 1 1-26), 
that the autobiography opens : '' Blessed be Jehovah, the 
God of our fathers, who hath put such a thing as this in 
the king's heart, to beautify the house of Jehovah which is 
in Jerusalem ; and hath extended lovingkindness unto me 
before the king, and his counsellors, and before all the 
king's mighty princes " (vii, 27, 28). It is with a noble 
courage and faith that with his treasure-bearing company 
he sets out unarmed and unprotected for Jerusalem ; '' for," 
he says, " I was ashamed to ask of the king a band of 
soldiers and horsemen to help us against the enemy in the 
way, because we had spoken unto the king, saying, ' The 
hand of our God is upon all them that seek him, for good ' " 
(viii, 22). It is a sincere self-identification with his people 
that prompts the notable prayer of contrite confession when 
he has been shocked by the corrupt state of things (ix, 5-15). 
If a man like this must be stern and exacting, it is not from 
hardness or blindness ; it is because he is deeply sensible 
of the far-reaching issues at stake. 

1 See above, p. 380. ^ See above, p. 328. 

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THE PURITAN ERA AND ITS LITERATURE 

The story of Ezra is not all told, not even its most 

important part is told, in the Book of Ezra. As has already 

been noted, he could not accomplish the errand 

Book of the that had brought him from Babylon until his 

Patriotic Ad- publication of the Mosaic law could be made 

ministrator . , i i i • • r 

With approval and authority, — an opportunity for 
which he had to wait twelve years. ^ The sequel, supplying 
the intervening events, is told in a succeeding work, the 
Book of Nehemiah, which originally was doubtless a con- 
tinuation of Ezra and the concluding section of the Chron- 
icler's religious history. Of this Chronicle account, tracing 
the Temple service and ritual from earliest times, the reading 
of the Levitical law (Neh. viii, 1-12), followed by a week 
of festival (viii, 13-18), a day of fasting and confession 
(ix), and confirmed by a solemn covenant (x), would be the 
natural culmination. It marked the point where the civic 
and the religious administrations, united under one revered 
constitution, could work harmoniously together, each supply- 
ing what the other lacked. It is from the settled sense of 
this situation, long the established order of things, that the 
Chronicler compiles his epitome a century and a half later, 
when Judaism has matured the promise of its birthday .2 

The Book of Nehemiah is more than a mere factual and 
annalistic continuation of Chronicles. It acquires a unique 
A E in literary interest from the generous amount of 
Autobiog- autobiographical material that it incorporates. All 
raphy ^j^^ intimate experiences and events in which he 

was the protagonist — the royal authority brought from Susa 
where he was cupbearer to the Persian king, the speedy 
rebuilding of the walls, the wise handling of craft without 
and graft within the city, the suppression of Sabbath abuse 
and trade, the flaming wrath against alien marriages in priestly 
circles — are told in artless, modest, yet self-respecting style 
in Nehemiah's own words. There is nothing else like it in 

^ See above, p. 380. 2 cf. above, pp. 381-383. 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

the Old Testament; Ezra's personal notes (Ez. vii, 27-ix, 1 5), 
which come nearest, being rather of the mission than of 
the man. The way in which the Chronicler in places has 
overlaid the account with his own matter sometimes con- 
fuses the sequence of events ; but one quite ignores this on 
entering into the limpid charm of Nehemiah's self -revealing 
journal intime. If for no other reason, the comprehensive 
Chronicle history as a cultus product may be accounted well 
worth while for allowing two of the most patriotic and self- 
effacing men in all the Hebrew annals, Ezra and Nehemiah, 
thus to speak out for themselves what is in their heart. It 
makes the real inwardness of the noblest Judaism no more 
remote but near and intimate, as clerical and academic annals 
cannot do. 

Note. Nehemiah's autobiographical notes, as indicated by the first 
person, extend from i, i, to vii, 5, at which point a genealogy intervenes 
which is virtually a repetition of Ezra ii ; and the first person is not 
resumed until chapter xiii, where on his second visit to Jerusalem (cf. 
xiii, 6) he vindicates the law. The passage viii, 9-12, ought to be added 
to the account of Nehemiah, though not in his words. It is remarkable 
that, though their respective services to their country's welfare were coop- 
erative and complementary, there is nothing to indicate that Ezra and 
Nehemiah were personally acquainted with each other. 

III. Reactions and Alleviations 

These clerical and academic annals, as represented in the 
books of Chronicles, Ezra, and Nehemiah, show us that by 
the time the Chronicler wrote, in the third century e.g., 
ithe night of legalism, with its chill austerities, its restrictive 
atmosphere, had indeed settled down over the tractable mind 
of Judaism. The Temple system held the undisputed mo- 
nopoly of public allegiance and sentiment. This regime, 
though not genial, was of course not all bad ; and at any 
rate it made the Mosaic religion a thing stanchly articulate 
and distinctive. Like later Puritan eras of which we have 

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THE PURITAN ERA AND ITS LITERATURE 

knowledge, it fostered sturdy and strenuous character. Still, 
it was a night, a kind of pause and suspense while the soul 
of prophecy slumbered.^ What we have to note here, how- 
ever, is that it was not without its kindly stars, by which 
men of more outreaching spirit could steer their way ; and 
not without its songs in the night, or in other words its 
literary utterances of more tolerant and liberal tenor. To 
some consideration of these we now gladly turn ; it opens 
to a freer atmosphere. 

If the nation had lapsed into a too bigoted attitude, it 
was not for lack of wise vvarning. As long ago as the time 
„ J of the Second Isaiah, who exhorted Israel at large 

Forewarned ' o 

but not to '' gather out the stones " (Isa. Ixii, lo), to "take 

orearmed ^p ^j^^ stumbling-block out of the way of my 
people " (Ivii, 14), their untoward tendencies were laid bare 
lest these work to the ruin of their prophetic mission in 
the world. If they allowed their spirit of clannishness, race 
pride, self-righteousness, and exclusiveness to get the upper 
hand, how could they, from a people despised and forsaken, 
become a people sought out and honored and loved ? In 
his idea they were to be not only righteous and conscientious 
but so gracious and tolerant that their life and law should 
be an attraction to the nations that needed salvation.^ It is 
plain to be felt that by the time we are now considering 
the nation had receded far from this prophetic ideal. They 
had given their untoward tendencies the rein. And it is not 
hard to trace how this came about. Not ignoring the first 
impulse of the returned exiles, the refusal in building the 
Temple to fraternize with the people of the land (Ezra iv, 1-5), 
one has but to recall how Ezra's notions of ritual purity and 
blue blood precipitated the matter of dissolving the alien 
marriages, and Nehemiah's further pressure with the conse- 
quent Samaritan schism and rivalry,^ until Jewish race pride 

1 Cf. above, pp. 352 ff. 2 See above, pp. 328 and 334. 

^ See above, p. 386. 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

and orthodoxy and exclusiveness became a fierce religious 
tenet. For this not the Pentateuchal law was responsible but 
the narrow and unsympathetic application of it, — an applica- 
tion far from ready to carry it onward to its supreme end in 
love. Moses' resolution of it in love to God (Deut. vi, 4; 5) 
easily became the hearty '' Hear, O Israel " ; but the cul- 
minating commandment of love to neighbor (Lev. xix, 18) 
remained incidental, not forearmed against that narrowing 
discrimination which, until Jesus came to enlarge its scope, 
would shut its neighbor circle up to the Jewish race.^ Hence 
the nation's spiritual self-limitation, and its consequent alone- 
ness in the fellowship of nations. 



Veiled Signs of Reaction and Protest. It must not be 
supposed that the drastic measures instituted by Ezra and 
Nehemiah would leave the public sentiment in stable and 
tranquil equilibrium. The people rejoiced indeed in the 
completed Mosaic law as a whole ; it was their welcomed 
Palladium of conduct ; but in some places it hurt. That 
wholesale putting away of foreign wives especially, invading 
thus the sacred relations of the family, was really, as we 
see from Malachi, the heroic remedy for a prior worse evil, 
namely, the putting away of native wives .^ As a safeguard 
of racial and religious integrity it had its justification ; but 
it was a deadly blow to that primal institution of conjugal 
mating which is the wellspring of jieighbor love.^ So the 
divorce itself, whatever its need and motive, awakened the 
healthy instinct of the subsiding prophecy to urge the care 
of the spirit of fidelity within ; and we hear Malachi saying, 
" Therefore take heed to your spirit, and let none deal 
treacherously against the wife of his youth. For I hate 
putting away, saith Jehovah the God of Israel, and him 

1 Cf. above, p. 402. ^ See above, p. 365. ^ Cf. Note, p. 402. 

[416] 



THE PURITAN ERA AND ITS LITERATURE 

that covereth his garment with violence, saith Jehovah of 
hosts ; therefore take heed to your spirit, that ye deal not 
treacherously" (Mai. ii, 15, 16). This, though practically con- 
temporary, was probably written before Ezra's remedial code 
was enforced ; but the chance of treachery and hardness of 
heart remained, and by many would be deeply felt. To the 
sensitive and reflective mind it would be like an uncharted 
rock in the spiritual voyage of human nature, against which 
the best that is in man was in danger of collision and wreck. 
It is to that inner boding, rising from a depth beneath 
race pride or religious rigor, that our thoughts now turn. 
It could not help existing ; and in the literature of this 
Puritan era there were not lacking signs of reaction and 
protest, though in the prevailing state of sentiment these 
must be veiled. Two products of this feeling come up for 
consideration, both in cleverly chosen literary type : an idyl 
and an allegory. 

'' Daintiest of love idyls," is Goethe's descriptive phrase 
for the Book of Ruth, ^ a phrase to whose aptness every 
appreciative reader will set his seal. There is no 
of an Old- occasion here to remark upon its meaning ; the 
r'^ ^it™^^" ^^^^k reading of it, as one would read a story 
of to-day, is its all-sufhcing exposition. It fits 
without trimming into every age, and here perhaps we might 
leave it. It is worth while, however, to note how graciously, 
yet how reactively, it fits into its own. 

It may be asked what warrant there is for putting the 
Book of Ruth among the works of this late Puritan era 
rather than where our English Bible puts it, between Judges 
and Samuel. The answer takes us first to its place in the 
Hebrew canon. The fact that it is in the third division, 
the so-called Writings, — being one of the five Megilloth,i 
or little classics, — is a silent indication both of its lateness 

•^ For the Five Megilloth, see below, pp. 482-510. 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

and of its popularity. Of course this does not necessarily 
mean that it is an invented story ; it may well have come 
down through the traditions of the Davidic line ; its chief 
point, in fact, depends on its claim as actual history. But 
we have further to note, with charmed realization of its 
skill, that the history, if such, was rescued from oblivion 
and told just when it would do the most good. Going back 
to the rude old times ''when the judges judged" (Ruth i, i), 
times of which otherwise we learn little that is pleasant and 
peaceful, it shows by a concrete case that there might be 
ideal relations of love and fidelity in families of mixed origin ; 
that ancient marriage customs were tolerant of foreign women ; 
that even from the Moabite people, with whom Moses for- 
bade and Nehemiah destroyed fellowship (Deut. xxiii, 3-6 ; 
Neh. xiii, 1-^3, 23-25), came one of the sweetest and noblest 
of conjugal unions ; and finally, that King David, the ideal- 
ized hero of Judah, the man after God's own heart, was 
the great-grandson of a Moabitess. There is a deal of adroit 
suggestion in the innocent genealogy appended to the story 
of Ruth (Ruth iv, 18-22). It does- not spare even the race- 
proud stock of Judah itself ; yet it holds no overt reproach 
or offense. The Book of Ruth simply embodies the reac- 
tion that lies implicit in the normal domestic relation, with 
love the arbiter, against the strained conditions that must 
have embittered much of the later Jewish society. 

From the idyl, so aptly timed and devised, we pass to 
the allegory, if such it may be called, the Book of Jonah, 
Jonah: ^ work of more rugged and massive conception, 
Allegory of equally fitted to asre and public, but veiled in story 

Good Will j,iT^ ^..'. . ^ 

and Cross- and symbol. By reason 01 its bizarre imagery 
Purpose and its anomalous situations this book has not 
received its due from modern readers. *' This is the tragedy 
of the Book of Jonah," someone has remarked, ''that a 
book which is made the means of one of the most sublime 

[418] 



THE PURITAN ERA AND ITS LITERATURE 

revelations of truth in the Old Testament should be known 
to most only for its connection with a whale." ^ While,, 
however, the whale incident cannot be ignored (it furnishes 
in fact an important key), our concern is rather with the 
book's place in Hebrew thinking and its consequent contri- 
bution to the growing fund of Biblical literature. 

Though numbered with the works of the Twelve Prophets, 
this Book of Jonah, unlike them, was not written by the 
Extrinsic person whose name it bears but about him ; not 
Traits of in the intense vein of prophetic warning or rhap- 
® °° sody but in the inviting vein of narrative ; and 

not strictly prophecy at all but what one may call criticism 
of prophecy. How it came to be ranked and valued as a 
prophetic utterance is explainable perhaps by its connection 
with a historic prophet. There was a prophet Jonah the 
son of Amittai, who in the days of Jeroboam the Second 
foretold the restoration of the ancient borders of Israel, to 
the relief of the Northern Kingdom from a threatened fail- 
ure (2 Kings xiv, 25-27). The name, however, seems to be 
all that associates that prophet with this Book of Jonah. His 
time was about that of Amos ; that perhaps was why the book 
is placed, with only the undated Obadiah chapter between, 
just after Amos in the canon ; but the sentiment and situation 
recognized therein is much later. By all inner indications 
the Book of Jonah was composed in the midst of the Puritan 
era and when the spirit of prophecy had so subsided that it 
was rather a reminiscence than a present influence. 

The author's use of the early prophet's name suggests the 
type of literature to which the book belongs, a type coming 
into favor in this Puritan era, namely, what was called mid- 
rash^ or edifying enlargement and comment.^ As the grow- 
ing custom was, the author has chosen to take a name from 
the nation's historic traditions and weave a lesson round it. 

1 Quoted in G. A. Smith, " Book of the Twelve Prophets," Vol. II, p. 492. 
^ See above, p. 407, footnote. 

[419] 



GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

Note. If the Book of Jonah is meant to reflect actual conditions, 
the author's choice of prophet and historic background for his inidrash 
is not without profound significance. Going back to the time when the 
historic Jonah of Gath-hepher had by his word averted a threatened 
calamity and under Jeroboam II witnessed the northern kingdom's 
greatest reach of external dominion (2 Kings xiv, 25-27), he strikes 
thus into the era when Amos and Hosea labored in judgment and love 
with Israel (see above, pp. 148-159), and makes coincident with this 
Jonah's call to proclaim judgment and mercy to the great world outside 
of Israel. It is the first revelation of Jehovah's gracious purpose to 
humanity at large, and it begins with the mightiest and wickedest city 
of all (cf. Jonah i, 2). The sequel, as the author portrays it, discloses 
both the world's readiness and prophecy's unreadiness to grasp the great 
occasion. The author means thus to show, perhaps, that from the be- 
ginning this unreadiness on the part of prophecy has been inveterate 
(cf. Isa. 1, 2 ; Ixiii, 5), quite in contrast to the culmination of Jehovah's 
design as shown in the Second Isaiah (cf. Isa. xlv, 22-24 ; xlix, 6). 

By a rather loose term I have called his book an allegory, 
but it is more like a parable. The only thing suggesting 
allegory in our more restricted modern sense is the name 
Jonah son of Amittai, whose meaning, '' Dove son of Truth," 
if meant to figure in the story, would only designate what 
in the gracious purpose of Jehovah the prophet ought to 
have been but failed to be. Such a use of the name, indeed, 
would not be meaningless — a little subtler, however, and 
more of the character of a literary conceit, than we are wont 
to ascribe to Bible writers. 

We are familiar with Hamlet's description of the purpose 

of the drama, " to hold, as 'twere, the mirror up to nature ; 

to show . . . the very age and body of the time 

A Nation's ^ o j 

Plight Mir- his form and pressure." ^ This allegory of Jonah 
rored in a j^^s, it would Seem, a similar purpose ; it is at 

Prophet's ' . '. . ^ , ^. ', , 

any rate an impressive mirror 01 the age and 
body" of its time. It is minded to give the *'form and pres- 
sure " in a picture of divine mercy encountering human fro- 
wardness ; and this it does by a story that in the recalcitrant 

1 Hamlet, Act III, so. ii. 
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THE PURITAN ERA AND ITS LITERATURE 

mood of an old-time prophet portrays a static and stag- 
nant Judaism mindless of its true mission in the world. 
This, I think, is the book's veiled sign of reaction and 
protest. It does not denounce ; it is content to let portrayal 
speak for itself. There is in it a rub of satire, not without 
touches of caustic humor ; but underneath it all, to my mind, 
is the burden of a tender heart made heavy over the cold 
intolerance and exclusiveness into' which so much of the 
post-prophetic Judaism has congealed. A far cry this from 
the ideal of the Servant of Jehovah, or the impulse that 
brought the exiles home from Babylon. 

We leave it to the reader to linger on the details of the 
story. The personal traits and moods of the prophet — his 
reluctance to obey his call, his fear lest God should be kind 
and thus spoil his threat of doom, his childish anger when 
his fear is justified — explain themselves and do not need 
our elucidation. The impressive background on which the 
story moves — as it were a world full of divine good will 
and human responsiveness waiting only prophetic cooperation 
— reveals on the part of the writer a spiritual breadth and 
liberalism beyond that of any other Old Testament writer. 
To find its parallel we must review the whole prophetic 
movement. And this is what I think the writer has done. 
That his purview is much greater than one individual's 
experience, or even one generation's, is brought to light by 
the leading figure that has caused so much question, the 
metaphor of the great fish, which, as I have intimated, is, 
rightly interpreted as such, in reality the key to the writer's 
range and scope. Considered as a literal account, as a thing 
that actually happened, it verges on the absurd, not to say 
the unthinkable ; the writer himself, bold as he is, would 
pause at that. Considered as a symbolic experience of a 
prophet who in broad consciousness is identified with the 
destiny of a whole nation, the figure is already prophetic 
property, used by Jeremiah and doubtless in this writer's 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

mind. When the exiles were first deported to Babylon, 
Jeremiah thus portrayed the event: "Nebuchadnezzar the 
king of Babylon hath devoured me, ... he hath, like a 
monster, swallowed me up, he hath filled his maw with my 
delicacies" (Jer. li, 34). Ten verses later he added: ''And 
I will execute judgment upon Bel in Babylon, and I will 
bring forth out of his mouth that which he hath swallowed 
up" (li, 44). Here, as we see, the writer, whose whole 
story is a midrashy has his underlying imagery made to his 
hand, furnished by prophecy as the name was furnished 
by history. Let us see what comes of it, as estimated on 
this plane. 

It is worth while here to take a moment's retrospective 

glance at the large prophetic field and ideal that doubtless 

ens^aged the author's thought. As we have seen, 

The Fish and , , , . . ^ r tt , 1 

the Psalm the whole majestic movement 01 Hebrew proph- 
of Thanks- g^y, with its presaged avails for Israel and the 
world, centered round an ordeal of captivity, exile, 
and eventual release.^ The vision of the two Isaiahs covers 
the whole inner movement ; ^ Jeremiah predicts a new starting 
point of history from its crowning event (Jer. xxiii, 7, 8). 
The experience was meant for Israel's correction and redemp- 
tion (cf. Jer. xlvi, 28 ; Isa. xl, i ; xliii, i) ; meant still more 
for his appointed mission as servant and witness of Jehovah 
(cf. Isa. xli, 15, 16; xliii, 10, 12). And so its outcome, as 
contemplated from a later time by a just insight, was not 
bane at all but blessing. Is it any wonder that when our 
author tried to portray this engulfing exile experience in 
the terms of Jeremiah's figure the literal situation overflowed 
the image's congruity, — that his imagination pictured the 
prophet as not only surviving for three days and three 
nights inside a sea monster but as composedly raising a 
psalm of thanksgiving for the deliverance thus wrought } 
Imagery had disappeared in reality, corresponding as it did 

1 Cf. above, pp. 135-143. ^ Cf. above, pp. 168, 302-304. 

[422] 



THE PURITAN ERA AND ITS LITERATURE 

to a great literal fact of Israel's inner history. So read, its 
absurdity falls away. A New Testament writer, reading it 
as a sign for the generation of Jesus' time, connects it with 
the mystic idea of death and resurrection (Matt, xii, 40). 

How did the prophet behave subsequently, or (if we have 
rightly shifted from figurative to literal) how did the nation, 
The Grace, chosen, privileged, and commissioned, respond to 
the Gourd, i^s prophetic duty .'' The rest of the book, carry- 

and the . 1 1 • • • 

Seif-Wiiied mg the allegory onward to the impressive situa- 
Grudge |-jqj^ wherein the spiritual '' form and pressure " 

of the author's time is mirrored, is the answer. It resolves 
into a well-wrought scene of contrast, — the universal loving- 
kindness of God for His creation on the one hand, like a 
gracious radiance over all humanity, and on the other the 
childish vexation of a prophet clinging to unrepentant con- 
sistency and nursing a self-willed grudge against mercy. 
The metaphor of the gourd, with its ephemeral connotations, ' 
serves to accentuate the essential smallness into which the 
prophetic jnotive has fallen. This shown, with the prophet 
still unreconciled to the tender inconsistency of divine grace, 
the story abruptly ends, leaving the angry prophet still sitting, 
morose and unsheltered, outside the city, waiting for a doom 
that does not fall. As we sense the power of this simple • 
situation, with the compassion of Jehovah offsetting it, we 
feel that the Book of Jonah, for all its mildness of method, 
is more than a reaction, — it is in effect a tremendous indict- / 
ment, pulsing with divine judgment. And that the indictment, 
made when it was, was all too just, we have the dominant 
race pride and intolerance and exclusiveness of the later 
Judaism to betoken. 

We have spoken of the reactions and veiled protests that 
this Puritan regime engendered. There were alleviations 
too. Let us, without closely specifying, make brief note of 
their existence and influence. 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

II 

While the Big Book is Growing. It will doubtless have 
been observed that the books of Ruth and Jonah, which we 
have associated with certain reactive tendencies during the 
Puritan regime, purport to have drawn their themes from 
the history subsequent to Moses, — Ruth from its primitive 
social conditions, Jonah from its inchoate prophetic activities ; 
in both cases deducing a more lenient and liberal idea of 
divine and human nature than the current sentiment of 
the writers' time afforded. This fact, as far as it goes, is 
not without significance. It seems to imply that prevailing 
spiritual conditions are too narrow. Ezra's Pentateuch — 
with a priesthood administering its Levitical ordinances, with 
busy scribes and rabbis '' setting a hedge about the law " ^ — 
was not, could not be, the sole Book of Life. It was, indeed, 
the foundation stone of a magnificent literary edifice, the 
first division of what was to become a full and rich and 
varied library, but there was yet much to be built thereon. 
And the materials for this addition, under the care of these 
same scribes and men of letters, were all the while under- 
going the sifting, selection, and editorship which would fit 
them for a place in the finished structure .^ So, during all 
this period which we have roughly bounded by the compila- 
tion of Chronicles, the " big book " — the Hebrew canon — 
was in silent process of growth. The second division, a 
kind of complement to the Law, came to be known, appar- 
ently about 300 B.C., as The Prophets, the largest division 
of the canon, containing, along with the prophets proper, 
also the history which elicited their warnings and counsels. 

In this chapter of our study we have spoken of the 
Puritan Era, as if it were a time that came and went ; and 
we have traced its beginnings in literature and inducing 
national experience. But it was not so truly a period as a 

1 Cf. above, p. 384. ^ See above, pp. 375, 376. 

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THE PURITAN ERA AND ITS LITERATURE 

spiritual attitude, a state of mind determined mainly by the 
dominance of the Levitical element of the Law, whose oper- 
Histor ation, while regulative, was rigid and exacting. 

Charged with This element had, however, a rival prior in in- 
rophecy fluence, namely, the Deuteronomic, which with 
greater or less dissemination had been influential since the 
time of Josiah ; and through this, the prophetic farewell of 
Moses, the distinctively personal force of the law became 
as it were a household companion, honored and revered. 
Of the succeeding history, as this was reduced to perma- 
nent form, the Deuteronomic spirit was a potent factor, — 
its style and molding being quite perceptible in much of it. 
Ezra's incorporation of Deuteronomy with the completed 
Pentateuch gave increase to an influence already powerful, 
an influence which the Levitical code could share with but 
not impair. 

'' Never has any people," says Professor S. H. Butcher, 
" been so conscious of its own spiritual calling as the Jews ; 
none has had so profound an intuition of the future. They 
pondered their long preparation and equipment for their 
oflice, its unique design, their repeated lapses, their baffled 
hopes, the promises postponed." ^ These words are a scholar's 
tribute to a history charged with prophecy. We have noted 
how the body of historical books from Joshua to Second 
Kings came to be recognized as '' Earlier Prophets " ; it 
was a just designation. ^ And when the '' Later Prophets," 
from Isaiah to Malachi, were coordinated with these in one 
collection, the meaning of Israel's mission in the world and* 
in the ages received its succinct expression, sharing thereby 
with the Puritan Era's contribution of Mosaic law. 

1 " Harvard Lectures on Greek Subjects," p. 31. 
^ See above, pp. 376, 377. 



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CHAPTER VIII 

TREASURY OF THE CHOICE HEBREW CLASSICS 

[Independent of eras and epochs] 

SUCH is the designation that may fitly be given to the 
third and closing division of the Hebrew Scripture canon,^ 
on which, having hitherto been occupied mainly with the 
field and purpose of the other two, we are now ready in 
^^ - ,. , turn to enter. The Hebrew name of this divl- 

The Implied 

New Crite- sion, K' thubhim, ''writings," has for equivalent 
"°" the Greek graphai, translated '' scriptures " (cf. 

Matt, xxvi, 54), and used in the New Testament to denote 
the Old Testament as a whole.^ Here, however, the word 
is of more restricted application. One might by a modern 
term translate it ''literary works," such being the implied 
distinction of this section as compared with the others. It is 
in effect the consciously literary portion of the Hebrew Bible, 
comprising the choice works in which, as the Jewish* men of 
letters understood it, the literary feeling and standard, as com- 
pared with the legal and the prophetic, came ta dominance. 
A classic is a work that has stood the test of time; sur- 
viving the shifts and waves of immediate juncture or opinion. 
R 1 ti n t ^^ takes account of these, arises intimately from 
Time and them as docs all vital literature, and has its fitted 
Change effect upon them, but it is based on something 

deeper and more permanent, something that without seem- 
ing to do so gives more to history than it derives therefrom. 

^ For the contents of these three divisions see note on " The Original 
Order of the Old Testament Canon," p. 19, above. 

2 It is worthy of note that the title given to the whole Old Testament 
in the new Jewish version (1917) is " The Holy Scriptures." 

[ 426 ] 



TREASURY OF THE CHOICE HEBREW CLASSICS 

Hence the quality intimated above. These classical works 
are for the most part independent of eras and epochs ; the 
timeless and universal claims of human nature alone can 
account for them. They represent in a true sense the impact 
of the Hebrew mind on the abiding issues of mankind. 

I. Traits of the Collection as a Whole 

The fact that in making up the body of sacred text the 
Jewish scribes and rabbis set first and greatest store by 
the Law (the Pentateuch) and secondarily by the Prophets 
(prophets proper with their setting of history i), thus sub- 
serving the practical uses of Temple and synagogue, need 
not be taken as an implication that they deemed this third 
division a mere repository of left-overs and miscellanies. 
The high character of its contents negatives this idea. A 
collection whose distinguishing works are Psalms, Proverbs, 
and Job would hardly be held in ignoble estimation in the 
varied values of Biblical thought. The scale of estimate is 
likelier, indeed, to have inclined the other way. For those 
who loved letters for their own sake the transition to this 
division must have been like escape into a freer air ; for these 
were the books which, instead of being read to the people 
by official requirement, could be read according to taste and 
convenience by them. It was the division suited to the 
matured culture of a reading people. 

Bear in mind what has just been said about the relation 
of these classical works to time and change. We are speak- 
ing now not of a progressive growth but of an eventual 
collection. As a collection it ranges over all the history of 
Israel from the awaking of the literary sense onward, — 
a history in which several lines of education in the school 
of Jehovah were parallel and blended. In the final make- 
up of the canon these were discriminated and classified. So, 

■ 1 Cf. above, pp. 376, 377. 
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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

describing roughly the avails of this third deposit as com- 
pared with the other two, we may say that as they drew 
from a history charged with law and with prophecy this in 
turn draws from the same history charged with literature. 

Let us consider some salient qualities of this collection 
as a whole. 

The most differentiating, perhaps, is traceable in its atti- 
tude toward the sacred truths of life. This is apparent not 
The H man ^^ assertion but in the unspoken assumption and 
Genius and atmosphere of the whole work. It is the simple 
nitiative conviction of the writer that his thought or vision 
is his own, and his faith that it is as true as if it were an 
attested revelation from heaven. This feeling is no novelty ; 
it lies at the roots of the human creative genius. A con- 
sciousness often noted in the swing and fervor of poetic 
imagination or inventive thought, it is the intrepid uprise 
of human intuition to meet and strike hands with some 
phase of the absolute truth or beauty. Its presence here 
is noteworthy on account of the prevailing idea of divine 
revelation which obtained in a nation so sincerely the ward 
and learners of Jehovah. 

What I mean may be understood from the current for- 
mulas of law and prophecy as compared with the absence 
of such things in our literary section. The constant attest- 
ing word of the Mosaic law, approved by miraculous events, 
was, ''And Jehovah spoke unto Moses"; and its precepts 
were implicitly accepted on that score. Similarly, the proph- 
ets' stated authorization was, '' Thus saith Jehovah " ; and 
their word was heeded without question of its source. It 
was as if the whole nation were consciously dependent on the 
revealed word of God, which avowed itself infinitely beyond 
man's (cf. Isa. Iv, 8-11). Yet alongside of this we may put 
the noteworthy fact that no such assertion or assumption is 
mad^ in the books we are considering. Their typical didactic 
formula, rather, is, " Incline thine ear, and hear the words 

[ 428 ] 



TREASURY OF THE CHOICE HEBREW CLASSICS 

of the wise " (cf. Prov. xxii, 17). All that is presupposed is 
the spontaneous uprise and free play of human aspiration and 
intellect (cf . what is said of Our Lady Wisdom, Prov. viii, 
22-31) working out its own salvation as in the sight of 
Jehovah. In this the nation's highest literary genius is en- 
gaged. A distinctively human movement this, yet accepted 
in the sacred canon as an integral strand in the web of the 
Word of God, and, indeed, on the same plane of revelatory 
value. Even its obscurest writer, using a word peculiar to 
the divine claim, dares to say, num haggeher, '' oracle of 
the strong man " (Prov. xxx, i), while its greatest is bold 
to report undying utterances of God out of the whirlwind 
of nature (Job xxxviii-xli). 

Note. This sense of the intimacy of human genius with the answer- 
ing collaboration of the divine, as referred to above, is poetically described 
by Browning in the words of Abt Vogler, as the latter tries to account 
for the transcendent worth and beauty of his musical improvisation : 

", . . for it seemed, it was certain, to match man's birth, 
Nature in turn conceived, obeying an impulse as I ; 

And the emulous heaven yearned down, made effort to reach the earth, 
As the earth had done her best, in my passion, to scale the sky." 

This merely puts in intenser form the felt 'cooperation, in the pro- 
ductions of the purest minds, of divine and human. 

Another thing to be noted of this section of Scripture is 
that it is concerned more directly than are the others with 
The Sphere ^^ passions and activities and duties — in a word, 
of Personal with the character — of the individual man. The 
^ "^^ Law deals with the affairs of church and state as 

a whole and with men's duties in prescribed relation thereto. 
Prophecy is concerned with Israel's foreign relations and 
with the nation's moral integrity in view of its destiny of 
exile and opportunity. All this has its bearing on the indi- 
vidual, for a nation's obligations are only those of the indi- 
vidual writ large ; but its edicts and warnings are addressed 
for the most part to the people in the mass, and do not go 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

far to enter their homes and fields and business. It has been 
noted, as a kind of exception, that Ezekiel, among his neigh- 
bor exiles by the Chebar,- brings the sense of sin and justice 
home to the individual person (Ezek. xviii; xxxiii, 12-20),^ 
but this is not like putting oneself by the side of the common 
man and speaking to his heart. The Law and the Prophets 
have their proper spheres of counsel and warning in attending 
to the domestic and foreign relations of the people as a com- 
munal unit. It is in this third section that the individual, from 
the awaking of the literary sense onward, comes to his own. 
That is one reason why the section is so independent of eras 
and epochs. In the eternal demands of human welfare and 
righteousness these do not count. Its works deal in various 
ways with personal character and conduct; we see the individ- 
ual man in worship, in meditation, in counsel and controversy, 
at work, at intercourse and business, at contrite confession of 
needs and sins. The whole gamut of personal life, so far as 
relates to morals and wise conduct, is traversed. All this 
works together to give this collection of classic '' writings " 
a central and supreme place in the heart of the Bible. 

The literary sense governing the works of the collection 
naturally gave rise to special elaboration and artistry after 
Outcome in ^^^ Hebrew manner, instances of which will be 
Literary noted in their place.* One gets from each of them 

Mind and Art r • t-t_ j. ti 1.1. v^ 

a sense 01 uniqueness. I hey are not like the lit- 
erary works of other nations. Distinctions of lyric, epic, 
drama are absent or only inchoate. And yet many of them, in 
their way, have achieved unique distinction as masterpieces, 
specimens, so to speak, of what Hebrew writers can do. 
It is as if each of the native types of literary form,^ devel- 
oped through years and ages from the primitive spoken to 
the matured written organism and style,^ were represented, 
as if for the world to judge, by its finest and best product. 

^ Gf. above, p. 267. 

2 Seg "The Native Mold of Literary Form," pp. 64-72, "above. 

3 See above, pp. 13-16. 

[ 430 ] 



TREASURY OF THE CHOICE HEBREW CLASSICS 

The fact is to be noted that this final division of the 
Hebrew canon was being made up just as the Hebrew type 
of Hterature was coming out of its age-long seclusion into 
the notice of the larger world, a candidate, so to speak, for 
recognition and power among the cultural forces of man- 
kind. As such it need not apologize for existence or com- 
promise with other literatures for relative merit ; it could 
trust its own intrinsic vitality. But neither, on the other 
hand, need it puf its most provincial wares forward. This 
newest division, accordingly, may be regarded as a kind of 
culmination wherein are displayed the supreme achievements 
of the Hebrew religion and thought detached in a degree 
from the chosen people"'s narrow history and brought nearer 
to the common frontier where the mind of other nations can 
fraternize with it. 

It is also worthy of note that while the make-up of this 
third division was still a matter fluid and undetermined, the 
earliest version of the Old Testament Scriptures (the Septua- 
gint, 264 B.C. onward) was also being made, thus giving 
the Hebrew thought currency in the most highly developed 
language and by the side of the most cultivated literature 
of the world. In this fusing of languages the latest section 
of the canon, as a representative literary influence, would 
bear no unimportant part. An indication of this, I think, 
is afforded by the changes of distribution and arrangement 
which the collection underwent as soon as it was done into 
Greek, apparently to make the literary tissue more homo- 
geneous. Job was put- before Psalms ; Ruth was transferred 
to its more proper place by the side of Judges ; Lamenta- 
tions was placed after Jeremiah ; Esther after Nehemiah ; 
Daniel was adjudged worthy of a place among the greater 
prophets^; while the cultus books,. Ezra, Nehemiah, and 
Chronicles, which had occupied a place at the end as a 
supplement,^ were transferred to their proper places after 

1 Of. above, p. 281. 2 cf. above, p. 405. 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

2 Kings. Thus this third division ceased to function as a 
coordinate element of the canon, and its treasury of the 
choice classics — the so-called poetical books — occupies, in 
our modern Bible, a place in the center of the Old Testa- 
ment, with the body of great prophecy succeeding. Such 
arrangement improves the order in which, for modern uses, 
the Bible may be read. 

As we are studying the Old Testament literature for the 
most part in the order dictated by history, we will continue to 
follow the history of arrangement also, taking up the books 
of this division in the order determined by the Jewish scribes. 
Some of the books have already been partly or sufficiently 
discussed ; what remains to be said about them will come 
up in its due order. 

II. The Three Great Classics 

In the case of these three books, Psalms, Proverbs, and 
Job, though so weighty, there is not the same reason for 
detailed description and analysis that there was in the 
case of the great prophets. Their independence of historic 
eras and epochs makes such treatment unnecessary ; their 
subject matter in part forbids it. It will be more advisable 
rather to inquire after the literary form and workmanship, 
with its bearing on the idea, and after the leading idea itself. 



The Five Books of Psalms. Cited by our Lord as if rep- 
resenting a specific type of scripture literature (Luke xxiv, 
44), the Psalms merit their rank at the head of this 
division as a treasury of the choice lyric poetry of Israel, 
a deposit of the verse that all through the history from 
the awaking of the literary sense onward was most potent 
to find and form the inner mind of the Israelitish people. 
Thus they embody what is most genuine and hearty in 

[432] 



TREASURY OF THE CHOICE HEBREW CLASSICS 

the soul of man, what wells, up from his deepest nature 
in the unforced yet finely ordered language of prayer and 
praise and song. The name given the book by the scribes 
at its completion was sepher fhillim, " Book of Praises," 
as designating the ruling sentiment especially of the later 
collections, referring thus to their use in public or private 
worship. Other names occur for individual psalms, such as 
"a song," ''a prayer," ''an instruction" {maschil). The 
Greek name, given to the individual poem when the book had 
become a part of the Septuagint version, was psalmos, a trans- 
lation of the Hebrew specific term mizmor, meaning ''a song 
set to stringed instruments," or as we should say, with orches- 
tra accompaniment, — an obvious reference to the use made 
of these poems in the late organized Temple service. 

These final names for the Psalms, as single poems and 
as a compiled book, are an undesigned designation of the 
The Lyrical ^Icbrew native aptitude. As already in part inti- 
Genius and mated,^ this was not for war or government or 

™ "® scholarship or art — what might be called the 
aristocratic endowments. The one art in which they excelled 
sprang from and in turn laid hold on the mind of the 
common people. It was the art of sacred lyric poetry, which 
when it became steady and self-conscious took the names 
by which we know it, — for the instrumental specifica- 
tion of mizmor is exactly paralleled by lyric {lurikos), ''for 
the lyre " ; and "praises," being the uprise of the heart to 
God, are the most buoyant and heartfelt subject matter for 
such expression. In a word, the Psalms embody the thoughts 
and feelings that the nation through all its history could 
sing ; that is, put into the most spontaneous form of ex- 
pression. How truly these lyrics give voice to the deep 
music of human nature is evident in the fact that the Book 
of Psalms has become, by translation or virtual paraphrase, 
the hymn book of a whole world. To say that these lyrics. 

See above, pp. 36-38. 
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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

are the Hebrew religious poetry — as if they must needs be 
separated from poems of other sentiment, 

And lovers' songs be turned to holy psalms, — 

is in fact no differentiation except in modern estimate. 
Secular and reHgious were not dissociated in ancient thought 
or emotion ; all was religious among people who lived in 
the conscious presence of a personal and accessible God. 
As to the occasion of these lyrical uprises, Professor 
Palgrave's definition of the lyric may perhaps furnish a fit 
suggestion. "Lyrical," he says,^ ''has been here held essen- 
tially to imply that each Poem shall turn on some single 
thought, feeling, or situation." In the case of our Psalms 
it is as if the occasion of the lyric mood were determined by 
a kingly mind and sung into a people's heart. These single 
incitements, among the Hebrews, were such as may be pred- 
icated of a people to whom their divinely guided history 
was a very vital thing 2; they were like a translation or 
rather transmutation of their history, with its dimly sensed 
destiny, into personal experience and devotion, — yet not 
so that specific events or situations are easily traceable but 
rather their fragrance and power. Thus it was that the 
chosen people's faith was found and formed through the 
molding power of lyric poetry. 

Note. As the lyric influence of song, has accompanied the whole 
Hebrew history, it has come several times to consideration in the fore- 
going pages, both in general terms and as connected with the composi- 
tion and collection of Psalms. See " The Song," pp. 66, 67, under 
" The Native Mold of Literary Form." See also " David's Part in the 
Literary Awakening," pp. 81-83 ; '' Of the Davidic Influence," pp. 89-92, 
for the general beginnings of Psalm composition ; and " The Collecting 
of Psalms" (by Hezekiah), pp. 197-201, for the conjectured further 
stage of the Psalm movement. This brings us to the' matured phase, 
which is the subject now before us. 

1 In the preface to his " Golden Treasury of Songs and Lyrics." 

2 See above, pp. 37, 38. 

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TREASURY OF THE CHOICE HEBREW CLASSICS 

As regards the authorship of the Psalms, the fact that 
the titles prefixed to two thirds of them are evidently later 
^j^g additions and so not implicitly to be trusted has 

Source in a given rise to a veritable riot of conjecture on the 
ersonaity ^^^^ ^£ modern critics, who, recognizing merely 
scribal rather than original authority, perhaps felt freer to 
doubt and discard,^ — a feeling which may be humored all 
the way from misgiving to stark denial. At any rate, these 
titles, which were once deemed as truly inspired as the rest, 
have very likely been suffered to pass under undue depreci- 
ation. We may accept them for what they are obviously 
worth. They have the distinction of being the earliest exam- 
ples of Biblical editorship and estimate ; they are judgments 
passed by scribes whose minds were steeped in the literary 
values of their race and history. As such they belong to 
the avails of the Jewish mind and culture. 

Note. Of the Psalm authorship imputed by the titles we may quote 
the account given by J. W. Thirtle, in " The Titles of the Psalms," p. 3 : 

Speaking qf the titles as a whole, it is well ... to notice that just one 
hundred of the psalms are in such a manner referred to their reputed 
authors — one (90) is ascribed to Moses, seventy-three to David, two 
(72, 127) to Solomon, twelve to Asaph, eleven to the sons of Korah, and 
one (89) to Ethan the Ezrahite. From this it appears that David is ^^e 
psalmist — no other writer can overshadow his fame ; and it is easy to 
understand how it has come about for the entire collection to pass by his 
name. 

Quite independently of the titles, however, one gets from 
an unbiased conversance with the Psalms the feeling that 
their organic sentiment is not scattered and miscellaneous 
but individualized and specific, — in other words, that it 
derives ultimately from an author who has impressed the 
stamp of undying personality upon his words and, as these 
are winged with song, upon his people. As to whose this 

^ A little like Adam Bede, maybe, who when of a Sunday morning he 
read his Bible, generally in implicit faith, " enjoyed the freedom of occa- 
sionally differing from an Apocryphal writer." 

[435] 



GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

personality is there can be but one answer. Of all the 
personalities of Old Testament history — one need not 
except Jacob or Moses or Samuel — David's is incom- 
parably the best known, the most loved, the most bracing, 
the most prophetic. This comes largely from his life, 
which in First and Second Samuel is more fully told than 
that of any other old-time personage, and which, in spite of 
grievous and sincerely repented faults, was a sweet and 
refining influence on all classes. Mostly, however, it comes 
from the way in which he coined his inner life — the life 
of a king who remembered his shepherd days and who 
could be humble and contrite — into the lyric language of 
the heart. It matters little whether we have his exact words 
or not, whether we can certainly trace individual poems to 
him or not. The ruling spirit of the Psalms is Davidic. 
Psalms written by others, or at a later day, do not lose the 
vital stamp of his personal fervor and faith. The vigor of 
trust, the purity of resolve, the deep sense and confession 
of sin, the sensitiveness to the wickedness and treachery of 
ungodly men, are spiritual qualities wrought out in the 
personal devotion and experience of King David, the king 
whose memory was cherished as '' the man after God's own 
heart" (cf. i Sam. xiii, 14; Acts xiii, 32), the type of 
true kingliness. 

Note. How truly the utterances of the Psalms were referred by the 
compilers to David's personality is seen in the titles in which specific 
events of his life are mentioned as the occasion, most of which events 
are taken from his life as a man — and, indeed, as an outlaw — among 
men. The list of these is given in the note, pp. 90, 91, above. Of 
course it is to be noted that these are only fourteen out of the seventy- 
three Psalms ascribed to David, the rest being supposedly the work of 
the royal poet. 

David's personal attitude toward his subjects and toward 
his kingly duty is significantly indicated in '' the last words of 
David," 2 Sam. xxiii, 1-7. The passage embodies much 

[436] 



TREASURY OF THE CHOICE HEBREW CLASSICS 

of the sentiment that one finds throughout the Davidic 
Psalms ; the main simile is of special fitness and beauty. 

The saying ^ of David the son of Jesse, 
And the saying ^ of the man raised on high, 
The anointed of the God of Jacob, 
And the sweet singer of Israel : 
The spirit of the Lord spoke by me. 
And His word was upon my tongue. 

The God of Israel said, 
The Rock of Israel spoke to me : 
" Ruler over men shall be the righteous. 
Even he that ruleth in the fear of God, 
And as the light of the morning, when the sun riseth, 
A morning without clouds ; 
When through clear shining after rain, 
The tender grass springeth out of the earth." 

For is not my house established with God ? 
For an everlasting covenant He hath made with me. 
Ordered in all things, and sure ; 
For all my salvation, and all my desire, 
Will He not make it to grow ? 

But the ungodly, they are as thorns thrust away, all of them. 
For they cannot be taken with the hand ; 
But the man that toucheth them 
Must be armed with iron and the staff of a spear ; 
And they shall be utterly burned with fire in their place. 

These words may or may not have been actually written 
by David, but one cannot, on cold critical grounds, deny 
the truth of the picture they give of "-the sweet singer 
of Israel " devoting his royal gift and art to promote the 
gentle growth of justice and well-being among the people of 
whom he is the anointed king. And the love and idealizing 
devotion of the people was the response. 

The Book of Psalms as we have it is the result of several 
collections or compilations made at different times in the 
history of Israel, doubtless for liturgical uses in the service 

1 Lit. " oracle " ; of. above, p. 429. I use here the translation of " The 
Holy Scriptures," the recent Jewish version. 

[437] 



GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

of the second Temple. These compilations eventually came 
to final and canonical form — conjecturally about the middle 
The Final oi the sccond century before Christ — in five 
Distribution books, making up as a whole the collection desig- 
nated by the various names, sepher fhillim, " Book of 
Praises," the Psalms (our Lord's term, Luke xx, 42 ; xxiv, 
44; cf. Acts i, 20), or simply ''David" (cf. Heb. iv, 7). The 
fact that the first Psalm is obviously a prologue to the whole 
collection, and the last a liturgical summary of its leading 
character as a book of praises, indicates that the completed 
book was regarded as of unitary trend and spirit. In fact, 
until recent revised versions were made English readers were 
not aware of its division into five books, this feature being 
retained only in the Hebrew ; though the marks of cleavage 
are plain enough, once pointed out. It is useful to take note 
of this distribution, as it furnishes some key to the move- 
ment of the Davidic poetry during the five hundred years 
of its power in the Temple and the nation. 

Note. In each of the five books the end limit is indicated by a 
doxology, the last doxology extending to the length of a whole psalm (cl). 
The following list gives the inclusion of the books, with the doxologies 
that mark the end of them. 

Book I. Psalms i-xli 

[Psalm»i, Prologue to the whole Book of Psalms] 

Doxology, Psa. xli, 1 3 : 

Blessed be Jehovah, the God of Israel, 
From everlasting and to everlasting. 
Amen, and Amen. 

Book II. Psalms xlii-lxxii 

Doxology, Psa. Ixxii, 18, 19: 

Blessed be Jehovah God, the God of Israel, 
Who only doeth wondrous things : 
And blessed be his glorious name for ever : 
And let the whole earth be filled with his glory. 
Amen, and Amen. 

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TREASURY OF THE CHOICE HEBREW CLASSICS 

To this is added a subscript (vs. 20) : " The prayers of David the 
son of Jesse are ended." 

Book III. Psalms Ixxiii-lxxxtx 

Doxology, Psa. Ixxxix, 52 : 

Blessed be Jehovah for evermore. 
Amen, and Amen. 

Book IV. Psalms xc-cvi 

Doxology, Psa. cvi, 48 : 

Blessed be Jehovah, the God of Israel, 
From everlasting even to everlasting. 
And let all the people say, Amen. 
Praise ye Jehovah.^ 

Book V. Psalms cvii-cl 

Doxological Psalm for the five books, Psalm cl. 

Praise ye Jehovah.^ 

Praise God in his sanctuary : 

Praise him in the firmament of his power. 

Praise him for his mighty acts : 

Praise him according to his excellent greatness. 

Praise him with trumpet sound : 

Praise him with psaltery and harp. 

Praise him with timbrel and dance : 

Praise him with stringed instruments and pipe. 

Praise him with loud cymbals : 

Praise him with high sounding cymbals. 

Let everything that hath breath praise Jehovah. 

Praise ye Jehovah.^ 

As one looks more closely into the matter, however, 
it becomes evident that the scribes and clergy, in making 
up the five books, availed themselves of- many earlier groups 
or collections, representing different waves of religious senti- 
ment or different liturgical uses in the service of Temple 
and synagogue. It is impossible on the scale of our present 

1 Heb. Hallelujah.: a formula of praise which, beginning at Psa. civ, 35, 
becomes a frequent and characteristic feature of the later Psalms. 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 



study to trace these in detaiP or to fit them conjecturally 
into the thought and rehgionof their various times. Nor, 
indeed, is there practical occasion. Worship, in its elements 
of prayer, confession, meditation, thanksgiving, and praise, 
is a thing timeless and universal. Besides, any new material 
brought from time to time into the Psalter would be subject, 
like the hymns in our modern hymn books, to such changes 
as would bring them up to the date and occasion of their 
use. This would tend to make the styles of different eras 
uniform and to change specific situations, historical or per- 
sonal, to the fitting idiom of a worshiping community or 
congregation .2 

Note. An interesting illustration of how a poem of quaint earlier 
style and particular situation may be changed to the sentiment of a 
general congregational hymn may be seen in the use made of Bunyan's 
verses on Valiant-for-Truth in the " Pilgrim's Progress" by " The Eng- 
lish Hymnal ".(1906). The original and the modernized are here shown 
side by side : 



Who would True Valour see, 
Let him come hither ; 
One here will constant be, 
Come Wind, come Weather. 
There 's no Discouragement 
Shall make him once relent 
His first avow'd intent 

To be a Pilgrim. 
Who so beset him round 
With dismal Stories, 
Do but themselves confound, 
His Strength the more is ; 
No Lion can him fright, 
He '11 with a Giant firght, 
But he will have a right 

To be a Pilgrim. 



He who would valiant be 
'Gainst all disaster. 
Let him in constancy 

Follow the Master. 
There 's no discouragement 
Shall make him once relent 
His first avowed intent 

To be a pilgrim. 
Who so beset him round 
With dismal stories, 
Do but themselves confound - 

His strength the more is. 
No foes shall stay his might. 
Though he with giants fight : 
He will make good his right 

To be a pilgrim. 



1 For a general treatment of the Book of Psalms from this point of view, 
among others, see W. R.Smith, " The Old Testament in the Jewish Church," 
lecture vii. 

^ Cf. above, pp. 82, 91, 92. 

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TREASURY OF THE CHOICE HEBREW CLASSICS 

Hobgoblin nor foul Fiend Since, Lord, thou dost defend 

Can daunt his spirit ; Us with thy Spirit, 

He knows he at the end We know we at the end 
Shall Life inherit. Shall life inherit. 

Then Fancies fly away, Then fancies flee away ! 

He '11 fear not what men say, I '11 fear not what men say, 

He '11 labor night and day I '11 labor night and day 
To be a Pilgrim. To be a pilgrim. 

It may be that the work of adopting and adapting the lyric poems 
of Israel to needed public uses was as flexible as that. 

Five books of poetry, gathered out of the lyric deposits 
of five centuries, composed by many unknown writers and 
The Davidic ^i^S^^g guilds, reflecting the fortunes of Israel 
Keynote and from the first great king's reign to a period far 
ea ng ea j-^gy^j^^ ^-j^g reign of any Judean monarch, yet all 
identified with the name of David and set like a mighty 
chorus to "the musical instruments of David the man of 
God" (Neh. xii, 36, 45, 46), — what then was the unitary 
and cohesive sentiment underlying it all, or, to put it in 
musical terms, the keynote and leading idea justifying its 
relation to that revered personality? Can we hope to get 
at it in some luminous and comprehensive distinction .? 
And if so, can we catch from time to time such echoes or 
undertones of it as will make us aware that the Davidic 
strain is clear and continuous ? 

I think we can. I think we can trace through the Psalms 
a deep undertone of harmony with the most far-reaching 
utterances of the prophets. They, as we have noted, cen- 
tered the eventual leadership and blessedness of Israel in 
David (cf. Jer. xxx, 9 ; Ezek. xxxiv, 23, 24 ; xxxvii, 24, 
25 ; Hos. iii, 5), and prophesied for him a perpetual king- 
dom (Jer. xxxiii, 1 7 ; Isa. Iv, 3) ; he is the idealized founder 
of the Messianic line. Of this he himself was dimly aware, 
though little realizing what it meant ; as one can read in 
2 Sam. vii, where Jehovah gives his dynasty the promise of 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

perpetuity and unique greatness. He took this promise royally 
to heart, and from that time sought in self-consecration and 
in the poetic gift that was his to realize, in his own life 
and in his leadership of his people, what it meant to be 
"Jehovah's anointed." ^ The term was always a sacred one 
to him (cf. I Sam. xxiv, 6; xxvi, 9; 2 Sam. i, 14); it 
appealed to the poetic idealism of his nature and to his 
profound sense of accountability for the use of the distinc- 
tion. With him this feeling went far beyond any care for 
the display or self-indulgence of royalty. It kept him 
humble and tender-hearted ; it brought him back repentant 
from his grievous faults ; it made him strongly sensitive 
against treachery and injustice ; in a word, it put him by 
sincere love on a level with all grades and classes of his 
subjects. The Psalms ascribed to him are a reflection of 
all this. Such, in its fitting nuances, is the Davidic V note." 
It is as if he would take his beloved people into fellowship 
with him, that they might in music and song explore the 
values of life together ; much as we see later when our 
Lord, as Son of Man, taught his disciples what the true, 
man, man in type and adultness, must be and do.^ In 
this sense his poetic work was truly Messianic. 

Thus we find, as we look at the Psalms ascribed by title 
to David, that though we cannot certainly deem them his 
personal composition, we can call them Davidic. Their 
specific quality identifies them. This qualitative term 
''Davidic" stands for much more than Professor Cheyne 
credits it with ; he says it is " but a symbol for a certain 
bold originality of style combined with a deeply devotional 
spirit." ^ It is indeed all this ; but one cannot well miss 
also the intensely spiritual and individual note — tenderness 
with strength, humility with kingliness, loyalty to Jehovah, 

1 Or as the Hebrew word always is, "Jehovah's messiah^^ 

2 See below, pp. 541 f. 

8 Cheyne, " Tlie Book of Psalms " (Parchment ed.), Introduction, p. xi. 

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TREASURY OF THE CHOICE HEBREW CLASSICS 

with an indignation against treachery and hardness of 
heart which is essentially the cry of an outraged humanity. 
And this stamped itself indelibly on the Psalms that- suc- 
ceeded his time, giving them harmony of sentiment and 
tone and keeping the successive collections in the essen- 
tially Messianic rather than in the narrower dynastic or 
ecclesiastical line. This is suggestively shown, I think, in 
Books III to V, in the occasional Davidic pieces that were 
admitted after ''the prayers of David the son of Jesse are 
ended " (Psa. Ixxii, 20). The characteristic Davidic sen- 
timent reappears ; it is as if these pieces were put in to 
tone up what might otherwise be too conventional or too 
purely liturgical. It is like a return to the original keynote 
and leading idea when these tend to be obscured by later 
modulations. The lyric note must be true to its Davidic 
power and prophecy. 

Note. It is interesting to observe how in the successive books of 
the Psalms occasional intercalated pieces, as it were landmarks, serve 
to keep the meaning and perpetuity of the Davidic line continuous. 
This Messianic promise could easily become dim and doubtful as the 
nation passed through vicissitudes of evil reigns, captivities, and the 
transition from monarchical to priestly government, but the spark of 
Messianism must not be wholly quenched. In Book I (after the indi- 
vidualized introduction, Psa. i) the second Psalm gives the sublime 
" decree," like the divine interpretation of the promise of 2 Sam. vii 
(cf. vss. 14-16), with its tremendous range of kingly destiny. This may 
be regarded as the keynote in its most vigorous and trenchant expression. 
There is no occasion to repeat this so long as the course of psalmody 
(in Books I and II) is set to it ; though at the end of Book II (after the 
reiterated Davidic faith, Ixi, 6, 7) the Solomonic Psalm, Ixxii, describes the 
ideal passage of the Davidic spirit from father to son (cf . Ixxii, 6, 7 with 
2 Sam. xxiii, 3, 4). In Book III, which is made up from the works of 
other psalmists, with only one "prayer of David" (Ixxxvi), and which 
moves in part under the shadow of invasion and captivity, the last 
piece ift the book, a " Maschil of Ethan the Ezrahite," repeats in glow- 
ing terms the promise and perpetuity of the Davidic throne (Ixxxix; 
cf. especially vss. 3, 4, 19-23), — a fitting culmination to a book 
gathered out of the middle ages of the Hebrew monarchy. Book IV, 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

a purely liturgical collection, contains two Davidic psalms, both in the 
key of humble devotion. Book V, also liturgical, and mostly in the key 
of praise, attributes no fewer than fifteen psalms to David; the most 
notable of which, Psa. ex, reads like a supplement to Psa. ii, but gives 
the Messianic king a new office, that of eternal priesthood, " after the 
order of Melchizedek," — a remarkable recognition of the undying 
Davidic sovereignty at a time when the whole government was in the 
hands not of a king but of a priesthood. Thus in all periods of psalmody, 
the latent Messianism of Israel is felt and reflected in song. 

Of the one hundred and fifty Psalms making up the five 
books, fifty-five are in the superscription designated as " For 
mu TUT • 1 the chief musician," or leader of the choir, all but 

The Musical ' ^ ' 

and Literary eleven of these being in the first and second books 
Disposal where the Davidic Psalms predominate. All of 
these eleven designations are appended to Psalms attributed 
either to David or to the older psalm writers Asaph and the 
sons of Korah, the former named of whom is mentioned in 
Chronicles as a contemporary of David (i Chron. xv, 19). 
This would seem to indicate that at a time when the choral 
service of the Temple was fully organized these Psalms were 
brought in from ancient collections or sources, and perhaps 
adapted, to serve as classical material among later pieces 
whose choral or liturgical use was taken for granted. It was 
as when Handel took Isaian prophecies which before had 
been read or chanted — "And the glory of the Lord" or 
" He shall feed his flock " — and set them to the immortal 
choral music of '' The Messiah.", How these poems had been 
rendered before this disposal of them does not appear. Set 
to music they doubtless were, being so many of them 
Davidic, but in a more primitive way ; and many of them 
may have been current in private use as closet poems or 
prayers. 

Among the older Psalms designated " for the chief musi- 
cian " are a number of notes and directions, musical or liter- 
ary, some of them already so archaic at the time of the final 
compilation that their meaning could only be guessed at. 

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TREASURY OF THE CHOICE HEBREW CLASSICS 

They appear in our English versions in untranslated form. 
It would serve no purpose to dwell upon them here, further 
than to mention in a note one or two points of special musi- 
cal interest. All the notes of this sort are prefixed to Psalms 
ascribed to David, Asaph, or the sons of Korah, — a fact 
which shows how inseparable from the first were words and 
music (and, indeed, music of a popular sort) in this heritage 
from the royal '' sweet Psalmist of Israel " (2 Sam. xxiii, i). 

Note. The Musical Disposal. One Psalm (xlvi) has the direction 
" set to Alamoth," that is, to women's voices (cf. i Chron. xv, 20) ; two 
(vi, xii), " set to the Sheminith," or octave, that is, to men's voices (cf. 
I Chron. xv, 21); seven (iv, vi, liv, Iv, Ixi, Ixvii, Ixxvi, all but two 
Davidic), " on stringed instruments " (Heb. 7iegi7wth) ; and one (v), 
" with the Nehiloth," conjectured to be wind instruments. These 
directions, though early, are technical. 

A further fact of interest, which seems to be illustrated by David's 
elegy over Saul and Jonathan, 2 Sa,m. i, 18 (see above, p. 67), may be 
quoted from W. R. Smith (" The Old Testament in the Jewish Church," 
p. 190): "A curious and interesting feature in the musical titles," he 
remarks, "in the earlier half of the Psalter is that many of them indicate 
the tune to which the Psalm was set, by quoting phrases like Aijeleth 
hash-shahar (xxii), or Jonath elem rechokim ^ (Ivi), which are evidently 
the names of familiar songs. Of the song which gave the title Al-taschith, 
' Destroy not ' (Ivii, Iviii, lix, Ixxv), a trace is still preserved in Isa. Ixv, 8. 
' When the new wine is found in the cluster,' says the prophet, men say, 
' Destroy it not, for a blessing is in it.' These words in the Hebrew have 
a distinct lyric rhythm. They are the first line of one of the vintage songs 
so often alluded to in Scripture. And so we learn that the early religious 
melody of Israel had a popular origin, and was closely connected with 
the old joyous life of the nation. In the time when the last books of the 
Psalter were composed, the Temple music had passed into another 
phase, and had differentiated itself from the melodies of the people." 

The literary disposal, especially of individual Psalms, is 
somewhat indefinite by our modern standards, owing to the 
looser observance of the lyric theme. The '' single thought, 

1 That is, " Hind of the Dawn," " Dove of the Distant Terebinths," 
evidently well-known secular melodies. 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

feeling, or situation" desiderated in Professor Palgrave's 
standard ^ overflows its bounds and covers a larger devotional 
mood. Such terms as ''a song," ''a prayer," "a praise," 
are clear enough but not at all specific ; untranslated terms 
like maschil, michtam, shiggaion,^ are less reducible to sin- 
gleness of idea. Two of the Psalms, one (xlix) by the sons 
of Korah, the other (Ixxviii) by Asaph, are made more defi- 
nitely didactic by being put in the mashal^ style (cf. xlix, 4 ; 
Ixxviii, 2). One Psalm (cxxxvi), with its constant refrain, is 
obviously an antiphonal anthem. Otherwise the internal 
sentiment of the Psalms, as, for instance, in the Hallelujah 
groups toward the end, must be left to speak for itself. 

The Hebrews' idea of complete and finished verse form, 
to which perhaps their conception of a rounded thought 
structure corresponded, seems to our modern taste strangely 
arbitrary and artificial. It is founded on their alphabet of 
twenty-two letters, and results in acrostic poems, '' in which 
the initial letters of successive half verses, verses, or larger 
stanzas make up the alphabet." ^ In our English versions 
this structure does not appear except in Psalm cxix, which 
not unlikely was regarded, in its time of matured legalism, 
as the supreme masterpiece of this kind of composition. In 
the original text, however, no fewer than thirteen such poems 
are found, eight of them being Psalms, ranging from the 
Davidic type to the late Hallel or Hallelujah.^ One seems 
to detect in these a certain conventionalism of effect, though 
not so marked as materially to flatten the devotional or 
artistic note. 

1 See above, p. 434. 

2 Maschil, by etymology, seems to mean " [a psalm of] instruction " (well 
borne out in Ixxviii) ; michtam (six times occurring) and shiggaion (Psa. vii 
in singular, Hab. iii, i in plural, as designating a class or setting) are of 
uncertain meaning. 

3 For the mashal in native literary forms, see above, pp. 68, 69. 
* W. R. Smith, Old Testament in the Jewish Church, p. 182. 

^ Psa. ix-x, XXV, xxxiv, xxxvii, cxi, cxii, cxix, cxlv. 

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TREASURY OF THE CHOICE HEBREW CLASSICS 

The most charming and, so to say, domestic section of the 
whole Psalter, perhaps, occurs in Book V, just after the huge 
and formal bulk of Psalm cxix. It is the group of poems, 
cxx to cxxxiv, called Songs of Degrees in the King James 
version, of Ascents in the Revised, — lit. ''songs of the 
steps." What specific employment or occasion they connote 
is a matter of varied conjecture ; the prevailing opinion 
holds them to be songs chanted by pilgrims on their way 
up to Jerusalem at the numerous feast times which were 
observed in the matured Judaism (cf . Psa. cxxii), — a cus- 
tom which had a parallel in the reading of the little classics, 
or Megilloth, on these festival occasions.^ One likes to 
think so. One is gratified to find this whole Book V, the 
latest compiled, of which these songs are a characteristic 
feature, so well rounding out the long utterance of the nation's 
lyric soul by gathering materials new and old to meet the 
spiritual needs of a time of settledness and abiding, when law 
and liturgy and domestic sentiment were ripened into peace 
and harmony. Of this state of things these Songs of Ascents, 
sandwiched between the austere cultus and the exuberant 
Hallel elements, are a fitting symbol. Their origin is less 
clear. They were evidently introduced into the book as a 
group, from an earlier source. Five of them, indeed, are by 
title ascribed to David and Solomon. My opinion is that their 
first compilation (and, in part, composition) fits best with the 
later years of King Hezekiah, whose reign had weathered the 
suspense and pang of the Assyrian invasion, and who after 
his wonderful recovery from a mortal illness was minded to 
devote himself to the choral service of the Temple (cf. 2 
Kings XX, 5, 8 ; Isa. xxxviii, 19, 20) .^ It would take little 
if any modification to fit the devout sentiments of the earlier 
era to the later, for the psalm elements of both are deeper 
than specific events. 

1 See below, pp. 482 f. 

^ Connect this with what is said above, pp. 198-201. 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

II 

Proverbs : Garnered Counsel from the Wise. Like the 
Book of Psalms, the Book of Proverbs is a collection of lit- 
erary utterances signalized by a royal name and yet confess- 
edly the work of many authors, named or nameless. The 
name Solomon prefixed both to the whole book (Prov. i, i) 
and to the most characteristic section of it (x, i) is rather 
a class term than one of authorship ; the book's distinctive 
contents being mashals of a specific kind which, the phrase 
"of Solomon," or, as we should say, Solomonic, defines. 

Note. Much of the preliminary discussion pertaining to the Book 
of Proverbs has aheady been given in Chapters I and II, above. The 
tnashal, its unit of expression, is explained on pages 68-70 ; Solomon's 
traditional connection with song and mashal in the Scripture books 
ascribed to him, on page ^^ ; and the broader subject of the Wisdom 
Strain and the Sages, on pages 92-96. The supplementary section of 
Hezekian proverbs (Prov. xxv-xxix), with remarks on the vogue of 
Wisdom literature in the time of Hezekiah and Isaiah, is treated on 
pages 202-204. 

No book of Scripture seems to reveal more clearly than 
does this Book of Proverbs the steps and stages of its liter- 
ary progress ; not in time, indeed, for there are few if any 
indications when particular proverbs or groups of proverbs 
became current, but in the gradual shaping and refining of 
its chosen vehicle of expression, the mashal. Its literary 
art is more self-conscious than that of other books, more 
mindful not only of what is said but of how it is said, in 
word and phrase. The thought-texture of the book, although 
its maxims are so detached and miscellaneous, is eminently 
homogeneous both with itself and with the rest of Scrip- 
ture ; it is in the workmanship that one traces a reflection 
of different periods and perhaps different schools or guilds 
of proverb literature. 

''The last thing that we find in making a book," says 
Pascal, "is. to know what we must put first." The remark 

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TREASURY OF THE CHOICE HEBREW CLASSICS 

applies aptly to the process apparent in the Book of Proverbs 
by which a multitude of apothegms, of different ages and 
The Shaping schools, Were fuscd into the unity and organism of 
of a Book of a book. The first section, comprising chapters i 

^^ °°^ to ix, was evidently the latest (unless we except 
the last two chapters) to be added to the collection ; and 
this was clearly not compiled from earlier sources but com- 
posed as a kind of introduction to and commendation of the 
whole. It is in this section, accordingly, that we look for 
the focal idea of the book, the ruling truth to which all its 
detached maxims have a more or less intimate relation. 

That focal idea we find in the Hebrew conception of Wis- 
dom, which, as already remarked, ^ was to the Hebrew mind 
what philosophy was to the Greeks and is to us. If, how- 
ever, the name is applicable to it at all, it is to be regarded 
as philosophy of a peculiar kind, as a view of life which 
connotes certitude rather than speculation, which does not 
deduce truth but asserts it, and whose nature may be roughly 
symbolized in its chosen term, ''Wisdom," the thing itself, 
as distinguished from " Philosophy," the love of the thing. 
It deals accordingly with such values of life as will bear such 
absolute statement, practical elements of character and con- 
duct which require rather to be enforced or enlivened than 
to be discovered. It is the truth fitted to the man who is 
sincere, teachable, right-minded ; it is in the most wholesome 
sense the gospel of prudence, sagacity, success. 

To a modern mind the outstanding feature of this Wisdom 
is the entire harmony it assumes between the secular and 
the religious, the intellectual and the moral. It is in unison 
with the great Hebrew ideal of right living. To be wise is 
to be righteous ; to be wicked is to be a fool.^ Or to put it 

1 See above, p. 94, and cf. p. 37. For an informal discussion of Wisdom 
I may perhaps refer the reader to my book on " The Hebrew Literature 
of Wisdom in the Light of To-Day," chaps, i, iii. • 
. ^ Cf. above, p. 95. 

[449] . . 



GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

in the theme proposition of the book, as propounded just 
after the preface (i, 7), which for proper emphasis may be 
expressed : 

The fear of Jehovah is the beginning of knowledge ; 
They are fools who despise wisdom and instruction. 

This initial proposition, setting forth the theme in contrast, 
is worth a moment's further notice, as the same assertion is 
repeated in sUghtly varied wording both in Proverbs and in 
other Wisdom books, and, indeed, may be regarded as the 
fundamental principle, the Newtonian law — so to speak — 
of the Wisdom cult. At ix, 10, its wording is 

The fear of Jehovah is the beginning of wisdom ; 
And the knowledge of the Holy One is understanding. 

So one might go on to cite Prov. xv, 33 (original Solo- 
monic), Psa. cxi, 10 (late liturgical), reaching its classical 
expression in Job xxviii, 28 : 

Behold, the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom 4 
And to depart from evil is understanding, 

which merely states the principle that Job vindicated with 
his life (cf. Job i, i). Even Ecclesiastes, in his later ven- 
tilation of Wisdom, makes the sum of manhood fearing 
God and keeping His commandments (Eccl. xii, 13). Jesus 
Sirach, the apocryphal sage, constantly emphasizes it. With 
this fundamental assertion goes the constant implication 
that wisdom, or righteousness, is in the way to salvation 
and wickedness, or folly, in the way to ruin (cf. xi, 31), — an 
implication which plays a strong part in the controversies 
of the Book of Job. All this shows wisdom not as a divisive 
force but coordinate and cooperative. It is at one with the 
other lines of religion and culture. Thus we see the sage, 
the prophet, and the priest, fraternal workfellows in the same 
conception of life, viewing it merely from slightly different 
angles and fitting it to their respective circles. 

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TREASURY OF THE CHOICE HEBREW CLASSICS 

The Hebrew mind is not abstract and logical but concrete 
and visualizing. Figurative speech, imagery, is its native ele- 
How Wisdom ment. Hence in chapters ii to vi Wisdom is set 
IS Set Forth forth not in an ordered system but under the 
simple concept of a priceless treasure, which is counted over, 
as it were, and in many phases urged upon the young man, 
the venerable sage speaking as a father. Such, so to speak, 
is the typical wisdom pose. This to begin with (cf. i. 8, 9), 
But soon a bolder figure takes form and growth in the 
author's mind, a magnificent personification, or allegory, 
the sublimest in Scripture, in which Wisdom — Our Lady 
Wisdom. let us call her — is heard to speak for herself. First 
introduced in a somewhat austere exhortation (i, 20-33), 
at her next entrance she puts on an ineffable dignity and 
loveliness (viii), as a kind of foil to her loathly rival the 
'' foolish woman," the too literal temptress of heedless young 
manhood (cf. vii, 6-27). It is the Scripture parallel to the 
famous Choice of Hercules described in Greek mythology. 
The passage in which Our Lady Wisdom describes her 
origin and station (viii, 22-31), almost as if she were divine, 
is the nearest Old Testament parallel to the Logos idea 
of the New Testament (cf. John i, 1-14), but of course far 
removed from it. 

When He appointed the foundations of the earth, 

Then I was by Him, as a nursling ; 

And I was daily all delight, 

Playing always before Him, 

Flaying in His habitable earth, 

And my delights are with the sons of men.^ 

Once more she appears, in her seven-pillared house (ix, 1-12), 
not in contrast but in noble rivalry to the false woman Folly 
(vss. 13-18), disdaining not, for purity's and virtue's sake, 
to imitate the arts and allurements so often and foully 
abused. 

1 I use here the translation of the Jewish version. 
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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

So, by portraying this majestic womanly figure, the author, 
representing the Wisdom traits as it were in living poise and 
action, creates and maintains the grand unity of the Book of 
Proverbs. It is one of the most elaborate pieces of literary 
skill and art in the Old Testament. 

Nor is this skill and art less apparent in the rest of the 
book. Let us note how this is. The preface to the whole 
Art and Aim collection (i, 2-6), first giving a kind of analysis 
of the of the book's object and audience, ends with a 

similar analysis of the mashal, its unit of word- 
ing and phrase (vs. 6), naming thereby what resolves into 
a double object of this literary form : 

To understand a proverb, and a figure, 
Words of the wise, and their dark sayings. 

In this couplet we note four terms, two of them general and 
two specific. The general terms, the first in each line, desig- 
nate the vehicle of expression as regards its form (mashal, 
translatable ''proverb," as here, or ''parable"^) and as re- 
gards its practitioners (''words of the wise," or sages). The 
specific terms "figure" and "dark sayings" are in the 
margin rendered " interpretation " and " riddles," and seem 
to convey the idea that the double object of the mashal is, 
so to speak, to shed both light and darkness ; that is, to make 
things clear enough to satisfy first thought and deep or 
intricate enough .to rouse curious or labored thinking. There 
is a very practical literary principle here. It is the principle 
that valuable things are worth labor according to their value, 
and that what is cheaply obtained is cheaply held. Hence 
into the elucidating thing which contains the writer's idea 
it is desirable to inject an enigma element which stimulates 
the reader's thinking, thus making him do his proportionate 
share in appreciating and appropriating the idea. This 
principle it is that underlies the mashal, or proverb. By its 

1 See above, p. 68, for the meaning of the mashal. 
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TREASURY OF THE CHOICE HEBREW CLASSICS 

clear discrimination or luminous imagery it conveys a 
thought ; by its epigram or half-truth or paradox or odd 
association of ideas it sets the reader thinking and solving, 
stimulates his active mental powers, and gives him some- 
thing to ponder and remember. 

That this art and aim of expression has not only an intel- 
lectual but a spiritual value is seen in the use which our 
Lord in his teaching made of the parable, which is merely 
a developed phase of the mashal. He employed this method 
deliberately, as he said, in order that his hearers might " see 
and yet not see " (cf. Matt, xiii, 10-13), and his appeal was 
to him ''that hath ears to hear." It was like the Second 
Isaiah's call to " bring forth the blind people that have eyes, 
and the deaf that have ears" (Isa. xliii, 8). Our Lord's 
method was to state some analogical truth which had all the 
clearness of a familiar scene or story and yet all the spiritual 
depth of a " dark saying," — to which, therefore, the hearer 
must make spiritual adjustment, like resolving an enigma, 
before he could understand it. The art and aim of the 
Solomonic proverb shows all this in literary type and germ 
as applied to the ordinary management of life.^ 

Although the opening section, chapters i to ix, gives to 
the miscellaneous mass of proverbs the unity of the large 
The Succes- Wisdom idea, the Book of Proverbs remains, after 
sive Deposits ^j]^ rather an aggregation than an organized book. 
It is made up of successive deposits, which contain no signs 
of chronological date or sequence, but seem rather to have 
been gathered from different guilds or sages, and perhaps 
assembled at one editing. The proverbs are Solomonic in 
the same sense that the Psalms are Davidic, Solomon's 
judicial mood of sagacity and wise observation of life pre- 
vailing here as did David's lyric mood of prayer and praise 
in the Book of Psalms. It is not in the nature of the 

1 For the art and purpose of Jesus' teaching in parables, see below, 
pp. 548 ff. 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

subject matter to take the articulation, the coordination, 
the movement of a system or treatise. Its tone is what 
one would expect to hear from an aged and venerable sage 
who could recall his honored days, — 

When I went forth to the gate unto the city, 
When I prepared my seat in the broad place, 
The young men saw me and hid themselves, 
And the aged rose up and stood.^ 

It is the didactic tone of a wisdom that does not confine 
itself to national boundaries or sentiments ; it is not in the 
idiom of Mosaic law or sanctuary chant or prophetic vision, 
and yet with all of them it is in perfect tune and accord, 
as it bears its share in the varied expression of the Hebrew 
mind. 

Note. The following is a list of the successive deposits of proverbs, 
as indicated in the words of the book. 
Deposit I (Chapters i-ix) : 

*' The proverbs of Solomon the son of David, King of Israel." 

[General title to the whole book, followed by preface, vss. 2-6, and 
by a nucleus mashal, vs. 7.] 
Deposit II (Chapters x-xxii, 16): 

" The proverbs of Solomon." 
Deposit III (Chapters xxii, 17-xxiv, 22): 

" Incline thine ear, and hear the words of the wise, 
And apply thy heart unto my knowledge." 

[Technical formula of Wisdom utterance, being the opening couplet 
of a preface, vss. 17-21.] 
Deposit IV (Chapter xxiv, 23-34) : 

'' These also are sayings of the wise." 
Deposit V (Chapters xxv-xxix) : 

" These also are proverbs of Solomon, which the men of Hezekiah 
King of Judah copied out." 
Deposit VI (Chapter xxx) : 

" The words of Agur the son of Jakeh ; the oracle." 
Deposit VII (Chapter xxxi) : 

" The words of King Lemuel ; the oracle which his mother taught 
him." 

1 Job xxix, 7, 8. 

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TREASURY OF THE CHOICE HEBREW CLASSICS 

What progress there is in the substance of the Book of 

Proverbs is to be traced rather in its manner than in its 

.^ ■-» matter. The items of the matter are Hke so many 

How the Ma- ^ 

shai Worked casual remarks or obiter dicta, — each proverb 
Itself Free j^ging complete in itself, deriving no support or 
suggestion from the one before, making no preparation for 
the one succeeding. Nor do the supposedly later compila- 
tions reveal an appreciable advance in reflection or spiritual 
discovery. So far as the movement of subject matter is 
concerned the book may be regarded as a body of static 
Wisdom, every utterance of it a truth to itself. In the 
manner, however, that is to say, in the structure and style 
of the individual proverb, there is traceable a move^nent, a 
development, which may be briefly described as the mashal 
working itself free. 

What is meant by this may be noted by any reader who fol- 
lows the text with due attention to style, beginning of course 
at chapter x, where the older Solomonic proverbs begin. 
As a preliminary, however, it is to be remembered that the 
unit of expression adopted by the Solomonic sages was the 
parallelistic couplet, the native art-form of Hebrew poetry ; ^ 
which unit they proceeded to develop, according to their 
idea of making its expression at once lucid and cryptic,^ 
into a couplet containing the maximum of suggestion, con- 
densation, and epigrammatic point. The result, as com- 
pared with the ordinary Hebrew parallelism, was somewhat 
analogous to the so-called heroic couplet of Pope and 
Dryden as compared with the more steady flow of descrip- 
tive or dramatic blank verse. So by their skillful cultivation 
the mashal couplet became the artistic vehicle of the crisp, 
pointed, thought-provoking pronouncement desired in the 
conversion of a run-wild popular saying into a refined literary 
form. They had sought their material in the homely 
thought of the common people, such as expresses itself in 

^ See above, p. 64. ^ Cf. above, p. 452. 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

maxims, and their treatment of these maxims was Hke 
turning a rustic remark into verse, with the added endeavor 
to make the verse itself an adage. 

Note. One sees the same tendency in the growth of popular sayings 
from prose expression to rhyme, rhyme being in modern literary sense 
much like the parallelism in the Hebrew. There is, for instance, a 
Spanish proverb, " Plow deep and you will have plenty of corn," 
which reappears in an English rhyme as 

Plow deep while sluggards sleep, 

And you will have corn to sell and keep. 

In a similar way going back to the oldest proverb quoted in the Bible, 
" Out of the wicked cometh forth wickedness" (i Sam. xxiv, 13), one 
finds in the later Solomonic mashal a similar sentiment in couplet 
form, ProV. xxi, 10, 

The soul of the wicked desireth evil ; 
His neighbor findeth no favor in his eyes. 

So when the sages set out to teach the people useful moral lessons, in- 
stead of choosing the vehicle of heavy dissertation they employed the 
poetic couplet, realizing perhaps, as George Herbert has hinted in more 
modern days, that 

A verse may find him who a sermon flies, 
And turn delight into a sacrifice. 

With this refinement of the form goes refinement of the 
thought. As soon as it steps beyond the homely folk con- 
sciousness it becomes more subtile, pliant, colorful, adapt- 
able, in a word, from a rather stiff workmanlike mold in 
which the art, which is first crude and tentative, becomes 
severe and self-conscious, it gradually works itself free from 
trammels of form to the point where the verbal and phrasal 
art is swallowed up in the swing and flow of thought. Such, 
in a remarkable degree, was the literary progress traceable 
in the Book of Proverbs. 

It is to be noted that the concise, single-couplet mashal, 
while useful for some phases of truth, is for others too 
limited. What it gains in point it loses in range and spori- 
taneous flow. Accordingly, as it tackles broader or more 

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TREASURY OF THE CHOICE HEBREW CLASSICS 

complex thinking it tends to escape its couplet tether and 
move more fully and freely, — as the French express it, 
from the styU coupe to the style soiitemi, from the abrupt 
to the sustained. Such is the tendency notable in the Book 
of Proverbs. It shows itself in two ways : in the phrasing 
and figuration of the mashal and in its increased length 
and range. This of course we are considering as a mere 
matter of style, but the substance too is profoundly influ- 
enced thereby ; and it is interesting to trace how the Wis- 
dom message, as it goes on to finer expression, seems to 
take on more persuasiveness and affability. Compare, for 
instance, the literary feel of chapter x, presumably the old- 
est, with that of chapters viii and ix, in which the portrayal 
of Wisdom culminates, and you can realize how the mashal 
has worked itself free. 

Note. Let us try to indicate a little more consecutively how this 
movement toward greater freedom manifests itself iii the course of the 
book and what, accordingly, is the reciprocal influence of form and 
substance. 

I. The original Solomonic deposit, x to xxii, i6, is made up entirely 
of detached couplet proverbs.^ This is the mold according to which the 
mashal appears, shaped and finished, in the smallest compass, a whole 
subject being thus rounded off and disposed of in two lines. In the 
middle of the section, however, one notices a gradual change in the rela- 
tion of the second line of the parallelism to the first. Up to the end of 
the fifteenth chapter there has been a great predominance of the anti- 
thetic couplet, exemplified in the first proverb, x, i , 

A wise son maketh a glad father ; 

But a foolish son is the heaviness of his mother. 

In this form of contrast are set forth in a great variety of ways the inflex- 
ible oppositions of life — righteousness and wickedness, wisdom and 
folly, industry and sloth, open-mindedness and perversity, truthfulness 
and deceit, discreet speech and silly prating, mercy and cruelty, and the 
like — as it were the massive fundamentals of moral instruction adapted 
especially to the young. We can see herein the 'fitness of the antithetic 

1 Except xix, 23, which runs to three lines. 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

mashal. An antithesis is a kind of self-closing circuit; it says its say 
and returns on itself, telling that a certain contrast is so but not why or 
to what extent it is so. It is adapted, accordingly, to aspects of truth that 
do not need enlargement or enrichment but only shar^ distinction. 

From the sixteenth chapter onward, however, we come upon a like 
predominance of the so-called synthetic couplet ; that is, a couplet in 
which the second line repeats or expands the thought of the first, as, for 
instance, 

He that is slow to anger is better than the mighty ; 
And he that ruleth his spirit than he that taketh a city, 

a virtual repetition, or 

The spirit of man is the lamp of Jehovah, 
Searching all his innermost parts, 

wherein the second line applies the metaphor of the first. This kind 
of couplet is not so blunt and uncompromising as the other, its circuit 
not so self-closed and exclusive ; it seems to leave its initial assertion 
open to enlargement or modification or illustration. This is an evident 
gain in suppleness and freedom of expression. 

2. A statement that can take one clause of explication can take more. 
The barriers, so to speak, are let down, and whatever is needed to make 
the thought rounded and complete can be added, whether in one line or 
more. The mashal, while still retaining the unit of parallelism, may go 
on to as many more couplets as seem necessary. Accordingly, as soon 
as we enter the next section (xxii, 17-xxiv, 22, with its appendix, vss. 
23-34) the most immediate thing that we notice is a change and a variety 
in the length of the mashal. The prefatory passage, vss. 17-21, goes 
on to five couplets (ten lines), and the next mashal is a quatrain. This 
latter form, indeed, is a favorite one in this section, though couplets and 
other measures are interspersed. One poem about wine-drinking (xxiii, 
29-35) extends to eighteen lines. In the appendix occurs a poem of 
eleven lines (xxiv, 30-34) about the sluggard, with a refrain; which 
latter, appended to a similar poem in the introductory section (vi, 6-1 1), 
suggests that the two passages were originally stanzas of one poem, 
which accidentally became separated. All this variety in the compass 
of the mashal, coupled with the fact that the abrupt antithesis has almost 
entirely given way to the synthetic couplet, is a telling indication of in- 
creased ease and freedom. A more affable mood, too, is shown in the 
fact that this section seems to be the first to introduce the personal call 
for attention which becomes the hallmark of wisdom utterance (xxii, 1 7 ; 
cf. i, 8 ; Psa. xlix, i ; Ixxviii, i ; Isa. xxviii, 23). 

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TREASURY OF THE CHOICE HEBREW CLASSICS 

3. With the Hezekian compilation, chapters xxv to xxix, which pro- 
fesses to be Solomonic, return is made for the most part to the couplet 
mashal, but with a difference showing another stage of the art. There 
is a greatly increased proportion of simile mashals ; for example, 

As cold waters to a thirsty soul, 
So is good news from a far country. 

Most of the similes in the Book of Proverbs, in fact, come in this section. 
The injfiuence of this upon the thought is not difficult to estimate. The 
figurative expression makes a finer demand on the reader's apprecia- 
tion and acumen, adding to the worth of the conception the zest of 
imagery. An effective simile is a kind of surprise. It does not deal 
in literal resemblance ; it gives rather some one point in which things 
almost wholly different are wonderfully alike. The use of such figured 
language is thus a tacit bid for keenness of thinking, a tribute to the 
reader's fineness and justness of culture. Accordingly one may note 
that the proverbs of this Hezekian compilation go farther afield for 
their subject matter, bringing aspects of wisdom that lie out of the com- 
mon range. Nor is this confined to the couplet mashal. There are also 
larger groups ; it is in this section too that the beautiful little ten-line 
poem about husbandry is to be found (xxvii, 23-27). Thus the greater 
freedom of this section is largely aesthetic, an increased sense of beauty. 

4. With the words of Agur the son of Jakeh (xxx), who was perhaps 
a foreigner, the workmanship becomes somewhat artificial and labored ; 
nor does the thought as a whole reach so high a level of taste and value. 
A new form of proverb appears here, the so-called numerical mashal, 
giving numbered lists of things that have traits in common ; for. example, 
xxx, 29—3 1 : 

There are three things which are stately in their march, 

Yea, four which are stately in going : 

The lion, which is mightiest among beasts, 

And turneth not away for any ; 

The greyhound ; the he-goat also ; 

And the king against whom there is no rising up. 

Even in his famous prayer, vss. 7-9, Agur enumerates the things he 
desires of God. There is only one other place in Scripture where the 
numerical proverb is used, and that is the passage, vi, 16-19, in the 
introductory section, where are named " six things which Jehovah hateth, 
yea, seven which are an abomination unto Him." And this is in a de- 
cidedly higher tone, as it were more Hebrew, than are Agur's numericals. 
If he has added to the freedom of the mashal, it is a kind of exotic 
freedom, not of the full tide. 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

5. More than two thirds of the words of King Lemuel, " the oracle 
which his mother taught him " (xxxi), are taken up with the alphabetic 
poem already mentioned, twenty-two couplets long, beginning, 

A worthy woman who can find ? 
For her price is far above rubies, 

and continuing in a lovely series of domestic traits. This concluding 
strain of the Book of Proverbs merits remark both for the perfection 
of its art and for the beauty of its substance. Expressed in that strange 
acrostic form which to the Hebrew mind represented the severest art in 
versification (something like our sonnet or stately ode), it is the most 
chaste and limpid specimen of that species of verse to be found in 
Scripture, — that perfection of art which conceals art.^ As such it 
presents both in style and in substance the mashal wrought to highest 
sweep and freedom. 

It is worth while to note, in our feehng of the increasing 
freedom and breadth as the Book of Proverbs goes on, 
how fitly the end, leaving its summarizing message with the 
woman and mother, answers to the poetic conception of the 
introductory section. Standing thus at the culmination of 
this manual of homely and practical wisdom, this woman 
section enshrines a chivalrous portrayal not unworthy of that 
adventurous personification, almost apotheosis, in which the 
Hebrew realism of imagination reached its highest mark. 
It is the noble literal of which the other is the conceptual 
type and figure, giving for the master of men (vss. 2-9) 
and the mistress of .the household (10-31) — adult and 
self -controlled age — what the other gives for immature 
and teachable youth. Only one idealizing step beyond the 
capable woman, with her household gift of management and 
tender sway, is our Lady Wisdom in her seven-pillared 
mansion, entering the lists of alluring warfare against the 
false Madam Folly, — thus realizing something like the idea 
later expressed by Goethe at the close of ''Faust," 

The woman-Soul leadeth us 
Upward and on. 

1 For a list of acrostic Psalms see above, p. 446, footnote 5. 

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TREASURY OF THE CHOICE HEBREW CLASSICS 

May we not regard this as an interrelation of end and be- 
ginning in which all the best elements of the book blend' 
in one beauty and fullness ? 

Like other strains of literature — the prophetic, the legal- 
istic — the Wisdom strain had its curve of ascent, culmina- 
r.,^ « ^ ^ tion, and e^radual subsidence ; and it is hard to 

The Crest of ' ^ ' . 

the Wisdom Say when it reached its highest point of vogue 
^^^® and popularity. This point would of course be 

much earlier than when the various deposits were assembled 
into a Book of Proverbs and the introduction commenda- 
tory was written. It would come at some time when the 
Wisdom way of thinking was so ''in the air " that it threat- 
ened to monopolize men's regards, as if no other way of 
thinking could be tolerated. To my mind this seems like- 
liest to have been about in the time of Isaiah, when the 
men of Hezekiah were copying out the. aftermath of Solo- 
monic proverbs (Prov. xixv, i). That some such situation 
existed there is an indication in Isa. xxviii, where the 
sentiment of the ruling classes comes into clash with the 
faith and insight of prophecy.^ Isaiah is urging trust in 
the mystically revealed word of Jehovah as against reliance 
on man-made diplomacies. Seeing that he can make no 
headvvay against the '' scoffers that rule this people that is 
in Jerusalem " (vs. 14), the prophet composes a discourse 
in the current Wisdom idiom (vss. 23-29) to show by a 
superior line of analogy that Jehovah no less truly than they 
is /' wonderful in counsel, and excellent in wisdom " (v. 29). 
He introduces his discourse by the accepted Wisdom for- 
mula (v. 23 ; cf. Prov. xxii, 17 ; see also Psa. xlix, 1-4 ; 
Ixxyiii, i, 2), and for the word '' wisdom " he makes use of 
the term thtishiyah, which by this time seems to have be- 
come a kind of technical term to denote the .human intuition 
in which men were placing unlimited trust as a guaranty 
of truth absolute. We may regard it as the sages' word to 

1 This has already been touched upon above ; see pp. 203, 204. 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

designate the human initiative of intellect and sagacity, the 
earthly counterpart to authoritative revelation from above. 
Earlier in the present chapter this sense of endowment is 
noted as underlying the literary consciousness of this third 
canon division. ^ It was when the feeling was at its pristine 
height, and when its sagacious pronouncements were most 
popular, that Isaiah came into conflict with it — not, how- 
ever, to denounce it but to reveal its limitations. 

Note. Isaiah does not quarrel with this reliance on thushiyah or 
human intuition ; rather he boldly makes Jehovah cooperate as an abler 
practitioner in the use of it. Micah, Isaiah's contemporary, uses the 
same word (Mic. vi, 9, where it is dimly translated " [the man of] wisdom ") 
in evident appreciation of its value. In the older part of the Book of 
Proverbs it occurs only once (Prov. xviii, i), apparently not yet stereo- 
typed to a philosophical term. In the introductory section, however, it 
occurs three times (ii, 7; iii, 21 ; viii, 14), twi^e as "sound wisdom," 
promised to the upright and resolute disciple, and the third time as 
"sound knowledge," claimed by Our L^jdy Wisdom herself. 

Both Isaiah and Micah seem thus to appeal to the Wis- 
dom strain of culture as the prevailing one in their day, 
with intimation of its infirmity and of what ought to be 
made of it. In their view it was not keen to read aright the 
prophetic signs of the times ; it was perhaps too hidebound 
and opportunist, too self -centered (cf. Prov. xviii, i). We 
shall learn more of its limitations in the Book of Job. 
From Isaiah's time onward the Wisdom or worldly senti- 
ment seems to have kept on in this same static way, as the 
common educative factor in the Hebrew national economy, 
until we hear- the leaders of Jeremiah's time, in their dread 
of innovation, saying, " The law shall not perish from the 
priest, nor counsel from the wise, nor the word from the 
prophet " (Jer. xviii, 18). Wisdom had gained an established 
status as a strand in the threefold web of national guidance 
and culture. 

1 See " The Human Genius and Initiative," p. 428, above. 

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TREASURY OF THE CHOICE HEBREW CLASSICS 

We have thus got a little glimpse of the Wisdom strain 
of thinking in its most popular days. The Book of Proverbs 
pfeserves for us its typical utterances, in their initial vigor, 
in their developing art, in their adventurous estimate of 
Wisdom meanings and values ; utterances gathered ivbm 
early times and from various guilds or centers, reflecting 
the practical working of the sound Hebrew mind in the 
everyday concerns of human experience and intercourse. 
And like the Book of Psalms it has taken its place, in its 
geiire, as a leading world classic. No other collection of 
aphoristic writings approaches it for compass and cleanness 
and spiritual worth. 

Ill 

Job: Crucial Test of the Heart of Man. In the middle 
of our Bible, massive and majestic, stands a monumental 
work of the world's literature before which the sincere 
scholar can only stand with the awe of one who takes his 
shoes from his feet. It is the Book of Job. One's proper 
attitude toward it must needs be such as to justify the 
maxim of Goethe quoted elsewhere : ''We really learn only 
from those books which we cannot criticize. The author of a 
book which we could criticize would have to learn from us." 
Job is beyond our criticism and our praise, but there are 
few if any books in the world from which we can learn 
such sublime and weighty things as its pages reveal. 

Note. A Modern Estimate. Carlyle's estimate of the Book of Job, 
given with the fervid unction of a kindred spirit, has become a kind of 
classic pronouncement. Speaking, in his lecture on Mahomet,^ of the 
Arabs and their land, he says : 

" Biblical critics seem agreed that our own Book of Job was written in that 
region of the world. I call that, apart from all theories about it, one of the 
grandest things ever written with pen. One feels, indeed, as if it were not 
Hebrew; such a noble universality, different from noble patriotism or 
sectarianism, reigns in it. A noble Book ; all men's Book ! It is our first, 

1 " On Heroes and Hero-Worship," Lecture II. " The Hero as Prophet." 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

oldest statement of the never-ending Problem, — man's destiny, and God's 
ways with him here in this earth. And all in such free flowing outlines ; 
grand in its sincerity, in its simplicity ; in its epic melody, and repose of 
reconcilement. There is the seeing eye, the mildly understanding heart. 
So true every way ; true eyesight and vision for all things ; material things 
no tess than spiritual: the Horse, — 'hast thou clothed his neck with 
thunder}^ — 'he laughs at the shaking of the spear!' Such living like- 
nesses were never since drawn. Sublime sorrow, sublime reconciliation ; 
oldest choral melody as of the heart of mankind ; — so soft, and great ; as 
the summer midnight, as the world with its seas and stars ! There is nothing 
written, I think, in the Bible or out of it, of equal literary merit." 

It is in the composition of the Book of Job, with its con- 
sistent correlation and progress -of parts and "plot, that the 
Hebrew literature approaches nearest in type and 
Type and Structure to the literature of other nations, espe- 
structure cially to that of the Greeks, from whom our 
modern standards are derived. Whether this was due to 
conscious imitation is doubtful ; the thing cannot be proved 
one way or the other. The main question, however, to 
which the book's suggestive analogies of form give rise, is, 
whether it is to be considered as essentially a drama, with 
scenario and distribution of characters, or a vehicle of con- 
troversy, something like a Platonic dialogue. This diver- 
sity of estimate comes from the different relative values 
accorded to its form, which is narrative and dialogue-wise, 
or to its inner substance, which from a short narrative pro- 
logue passes into a series of impassioned discourses on the 
profoundest problems of life. I am not sure, however, that 
this is the essential alternative. Another type of discourse 
seems to me worthy of consideration by the side of the 
dramatic — namely, the epic ; this on account of the heroic 
spiritual achievements, as we may truly call them, of Job 
in his tremendous encounter with the mysterious dealings 
of God and the mistaken judgments of his friends. It is 
as if the patriarch's words were veritable deeds of valor 
and victory. Accordingly, in my studies of the book I 
have ventured to assign it to the epic type, — calling it for 

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TREASURY OF THE CHOICE HEBREW CLASSICS 

distinction " The Epic of tlie Inner Life." ^ In so doing, 
however, I would not deny to it other elements. It is of no 
great importance, after all, whether it be called dramatic or 
epic ; it has traits of both literary types, and either term has 
to be materially accommodated to fit its case. 

All this, however, is only of the side and the surface. 
What is of real account is that, penetrating to the spirit of 
the poem, we forget considerations of literary deportment 
while with a sense of truly epic grandeur we trace the heroic 
uprise' of the intrinsic heart of man, as Job, in utter honesty 
with himself, in clear-eyed assessment of things as they are, 
and in unshaken demand for the godlike, conquers his way 
through bafflements and falsities to light and vindication. 

Note. The nearest classical parallel to Job is the "Prometheus 
Bound" of y^schylus, which, though in dramatic form, embodies an 
epos. The following brief outline of the course of the story may aid in 
tracing the struggle of Job, the Hebrew Prometheus, to truth and light. 
I note five acts or stages, with their points of objective. 

Act L To Job's blessing and curse, i-iii. 

[The stroke devised and executed ; the silent friends ; Job's access 
of bewilderment.] 

Act IL To Job's ultimatum of doubt, iv-x. 

[Wisdom misfit and insipid ; the world-order a hardness and chaos ; 
Job's plea for mutuality and mediation.] 

Act III. To Job's ultimatum of faith, xi-xix. 

[The friends' false attitude ; Job's life resolve of integrity ; conviction 
that his Redeemer (next of kin) liveth.] 

Act IV. To Job's verdict on things as they are, xx-xxxi. 

[No outward terms of profit and loss ; yet wisdom still supreme ; 
Job's life record ready for presentation.] 

Act V. To the vindicating denouement, xxxii-xlii. 

[The self-constituted umpire fails ; the whirlwind words display wis- 
dom and power of creation ; Job emerges to vindication and mediation.] 

1 I would here refer the reader to my book " The Epic of the Inner 
Life" (Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston), pp. 20-26, for an explanation 
of the modified sense in which I have adopted the term. 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

If we let the book speak for itself, not trying to cramp 
its structure too rigidly either to a dramatic, an argumen- 
tative, or an epic model, we find its framework simple, 
consecutive, well articulated. In a workmanship quite be- 
yond that of other Scripture books it reveals its occasion, 
its purpose, its motivation, its fitting solution. I regard the 
movement throughout as narrative, that of a story, having 
a developed plot with its proper involution and unfolding, — 
this notwithstanding the fact that it is carried on for the 
most part not by 'action and incident but by the give and 
take of speech. In other words, the action and its event 
are elements of an inner history. An introduction or pro- 
logue two chapters long (i, ii), a short interlude or transition 
(xxxii, 1-5), and a conclusion of eleven verses (xlii, 7-17), 
all in prose, suffice to indicate the setting and structure of 
the piece ; the rest (iii, i-xlii, 6), in a steady flow of im- 
passioned poetry, gives, by the verbal encounter of several 
characters (including Jehovah Himself) with Job, the por- 
trayal of human integrity, fidelity, and steadfastness for the 
sake of which this truly epic poem exists. 

Note. The Book of Job, along with the Pentateuch and Isaiah, 
has come in for a generous share of surgical and destructive criticism, 
in the endeavor to determine what was its original scope. The rather 
prominent framework of three-times three rounds of speeches (iii-xxxi), 
embodying a debate, seems to have been quite generally assumed as the 
original nucleus, and the disposition has been to take this torso as a 
kind of treatise on " Why God punishes the righteous," or some such 
abstraction, — patching up the text in divers places to make the frame- 
work consistently mechanical ; while the parts that have by critics of 
various cahber been put in peril thereby include such things as the epi- 
logue, the Elihu portion, the twenty-eighth chapter, the descriptions of 
behemoth and leviathan, — not always sparing even the prologue and 
the address from the whirlwind. It is needless to say that the present 
study prefers, as in other cases, to read the Book of Job in its latest 
edition, presupposing that the author — or final editor, whoever he was, — 
had reason and warrant for publishing the book as it substantially is. 
It gives a better net result that way. 

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TREASURY OF THE CHOICE HEBREW CLASSICS 

Conjectures of the age in which the Book of Job was 
written have covered an extraordinary range of time, from 
►Origin and ^^e age of Moses or even earher to the period 
Authorship of the Greek domination. On account of its 
patriarchal setting old-time scholars have deemed it the 
oldest book in the Bible ; but this supposition went with 
the idea that the book is a record of chronicled history 
rather than a virtual epic or dramatic poem with its marks 
of creative ii^vention and literary artistry. To assume this 
latter alternative, however, — namely, that instead of an 
annalistic report it is a literary creation, having for basis, 
if you please, an ancient Semitic epos, puts a quite different 
coloring upon the matter. It enables us in better measure 
to account not only for its primitive scene and setting but 
for its highly matured thought and art. 

Note. The word " epos," as defined by the Oxford Dictionary, is " a 
collective term for early unwritten narrative poems celebrating incidents 
of heroic tradition ; the rudimentary form of epic poetry." One need 
not enlarge on the application of this definition here. It is sufficient to 
mention the Promethean epos underlying ^schylos's " Prometheus 
Bound," the Odyssean epos in Homer; the Eden epos underlying 
"Paradise Lost " : the Arthurian epos underlying Tennyson's " Idylls of 
the King," all of which embody central meanings for the soul of a race 
or a nation, and none more truly than our assumed epos of Job, 

That something like a Job epos was known and influential 
at a very vital period of Israel's history is indicated by 
Ezekiel, in a passage already remarked upon in another 
connection. Speaking, in the early years of the Chaldean 
exile, of his people's chances for release, he says of the 
doomed homeland, '' Though these three men, Noah, Daniel, 
and Job, were in it, they should deliver but their own souls 
by their righteousness, saith the Lord Jehovah " (Ezek. xiv, 
14, 16, 20). Here Job, in an imputed character like that of the 
Book of Job, is ranked with Noah, an ancient hero common 
to Israelites and Chaldeans, and Daniel, a contemporary of 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

* 

E^ekiel himself/ All three are adduced as personages of 

paramount significance as related to the destiny of Israel ; 
and yet it is only here in Ezekiel that Job is mentioned at 
all outside of the book that bears his name, where, as it 
seems, the Job epos is wrought out in full. 

This mention of Job, especially as on equal terms with 
Daniel, rouses curious inquiries. The story of Daniel, as 
we know, was written out many years afterward, in our 
Book of Daniel, and we can judge from that story why his 
exiled countrymen, aware of his wonderful success at court 
(cf. Ezek. xxviii, 3, for his reputed wisdom), would build 
great hopes on him. The tradition of Job, of which this 
mention in Ezekiel is the first trace, was afterwards written 
:g.Ut in like manner into a work of literature. May there 
have been some idealized connection between the ancient 
epos and a contemporary personage on whom, in the cir- 
cumstances of the time, it was natural to build hopes ? 
How otherwise can we interpret Ezekiel's strong yet strange 
allusion } 

I am inclined to think there was such a connection ; and 
let me here give my conjecture for what it is worth. It looks 
to me as if the name ''Job," on account of its connotations, 
may have been adopted by the Jewish elders (Ezekiel's words 
were to them ; see Ezek. xiv, i) to stand for another name 
which during Nebuchadnezzar's life it would not be safe or 
politic to use. I refer to their king Jehoiachin, still a king 
though a prisoner of state, who at the time/ of Ezekiel's men- 
tion was in the sixth year of his incarceration (cf . Ezek. viii, i 
with XX, i). To make his name openly current, especially 
as associated with hopes of deliverance, might be perilous 
both to him and to them. To use the name '' Job," with the 
understood sense of what it meant and whom, would be 
safe and richly symbolic. Thus the Job epos may have 

' '1 For Daniel's part in this strange trio of worthies, and its suggested 
relation to, history, see above, pp. 284, 285. 

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TREASURY OF THE CHOICE HEBREW CLASSICS 

come cryptically into the Jewish mind and polity, perhaps 
from some source discovered in Chaldea, and, having first 
been seized upon for the masking name it bore, may in 
course of time have been wrought by a master poet into the 
Book of Job. 

This consideration would make the Book of Job a prod- 
uct of the exile period, which we have already found so preg- 
nant of redemptive and prophetic forces. It connects itself 
with the view I have taken of the individualized Servant of 
Jehovah, as presented in the Second Isaiah ; whom I have 
ventured to identify with the king who so patiently endured 
thirty-seven years of imprisonment and then, at Nebuchad- 
nezzar's death, was released and held in honor among 
kings .^. The similarity of experience and sentiment between 
the Book of Job and the Second Isaiah has been universally 
noted by thoughtful scholars. It is as if both works had 
been hewn from the same stratum of spiritual discipline and 
faith, as if underneath both were some personality of sub- 
lime masterliness and patience both to achieve and to suffer. 
Nowhere else in the Old Testament do we get so intimate 
an approach to a veritable hero of epic action and song. 

As to the authorship of the Book of Job, to one who has 
conjectured thus far a further step of surmise is tempting, 
though it must needs be hazarded with guardedness and 
caution. It seems to come somehow from the heart of that 
imprisonment. It connotes some personal conflict and issue 
not invented but actual, — something added to the epos 
which was its symbol. " When we see the natural style," 
says Pascal, '' we are quite astonished and delighted ; for we 
expected to see an author, and we find a man." Nowhere 
in the Old Testament is the author more masterly, yet no- 
where does the man so eclipse the author as in this Book 
of Job. Now as we look for the man of the Second Isaiah, 

1 For this personal identification of the Servant of Jehovah, with its 
Scripture grounds, see above, pp. 315-323. 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

we find one who in the midst of prison indignities seems 
to say of himself, '* The Lord Jehovah hath given me the 
tongue of them that are taught, that I may know how to 
sustain with words him that is weary : he waken eth morning 
by morning, he wakeneth mine ear to hear as they that 
are taught " (Isa. 1, 4). If these words state something real 
under their poetry, there was a literary zeal and activity 
pressed out of that prison experience, something more, it 
would seem, than was incorporated in the words of the 
Second Isaiah. A remarkable passage also, xii, 17-xiii, 2, 
reads as if experienced and written by an eye-witness of the 
captivity and deportation. The similar firmness of attitude 
in xiii, 15-19 and Isa. 1, 7-9 cannot well go unnoted as one 
compares the two books ; it reads like one and the same 
personal mood. May not this Job epos, already brought so 
suggestively into the intimate hopes of Israel, have been 
wrought to epic form by a royal author, either in the prison 
years or in the time that followed his release ? One can of 
course answer neither yes nor no ; but one can ponder the 
fitness of the idea, putting the elements of the case together. 

Note. Some of the most notable books of the world^s literature 
have been written during imprisonment. Two may be here 'mentioned : 
Bunyan's " Pilgrim's Progress " and Cervantes' " Don Quixote." If 
we put the Book of Job by the side of these, we make its occasion far 
deeper and more far-reaching than theirs ; we trace it to the heart of 
Biblical truth. The occasion is worthy and cogent. 

In the study of a literary work so well put together as 
is this Book of Job it is important to get first at the main 
„^ „ . point of departure and to follow its lead as far as 

The Cynic ^ . ^ 

and his Carp- this is self-consistent. Such an outset is not lack- 
ing Wager .-j^g here. It is strongly marked, and the book's 
whole movement is governed from it. It is worded in Satan's 
cynical question of motive, " Doth Job fear God for nought } " 
(i, 9). To trace the answer of this question, as its whole- 
sale insinuations are directed against men like Job, against 

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TREASURY OF THE CHOICE HEBREW CLASSICS 

the accepted wisdom of life, against God's governance of the 
world, is to my mind the unitary purpose and business of 
the Book of Job. Other problems come in for solution by 
the way, for the vital radiations of the thought are many, 
but the large answer to this question encompasses them all. 
And the answer is made not in terms of a debate or of an 
ordered theory, but in the living terms of a man who is 
true to his sense of the divine and honest with himself. 
That is its sublimely epic quality. 

Let us see how the situation reveals itself from this 
point of view. 

The cynic spirit, here personified as the Satan or Accuser, 
gauging manhood by its selfish measure, sees in the best of 
men nothing intrinsically genuine, nothing higher than self- 
interest. Job, the man perfect and upright, who fears God 
and shuns evil (i, i), is judged as simply a prudent business 
man. He serves God because it pays to be pious and good. 
His wealth, his prosperity, his renown, his happy household, 
his honored age, are so many elements of wage and reward. 
One might say it is not the real Job who is so pious, it is 
his possessions and comforts, which are like the proceeds 
of an investment. So sure is the Satan of this that he is 
ready to submit the proof of it to a wager. Take away 
these rewards, he urges, and Job will renounce a service 
that no longer yields returns. Such is his cynic measure of 
manhood and its motives ; and God's acceptance of the 
wager evinces God's faith in human nature. Man is His own 
handiwork, created in His image ; and He takes the risk 
of proving manhood true to its unseen Pattern and Type. 
So Job, unknown to himself, is made a spectacle to the ages, 
as the subject of an arbitrary experiment. His possessions 
are swept away, his children killed, and to crown all a leprous 
disease, elephantiasis, universally deemed the sign of the 
personal wrath of God — such was Satan's lie — reduces 
him to the extremity of wretchedness and suffering. 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

The cynic's indictment is shrewd and sweeping. Directed 
first against the integrity of human nature as typed in the 
person of Job, it makes him the concrete embodiment by 
which the experiment will stand or fall. But he is not the 
only object of attack. The prevailing Wisdom idea is also 
at stake, a static and stereotyped philosophy which has 
laid itself open to such imputation of motive. Nor does 
Jehovah Himself, who has made the pull of self-interest so 
safe and profitable, escape a cleverly insinuated censure. In 
sum, Satan — and many a like spirit since — is sure he has 
unearthed the vulnerable spot in the dealings of God with 
man and of man's response. 

It is in order to raise this question of Satan's that the 
prose prologue, chapters i and ii, with its twin scenes in 
heaven and earth, is introduced. It is in order to meet and 
resolve its various thrusts of implication that the ensuing 
chapters of poetry, the true epic body of the story, are 
wrought into symmetry and form. We cannot enter here 
into an analysis of the poem ; let us rather consider briefly 
the three lines of indictment just suggested, putting Job, 
however, not first but third. 

I. The friends of Job, who, on hearing of his affliction, 
come to condole and remain to condemn, represent according 
to their individual temperaments the current and 
counter°with conventional thinking of their day ; and this, 
the Wisdom as the gist of their discussion reveals, is of the 
Wisdom mood and strain. Utterances of sages 
are frequently cited or referred to as drawn from venerable 
stores of precept (cf. viii, 8-10) with which the friends and 
Job alike are familiar. Job himself is as it were a sage 
among sages ; his eminence in life has made him so (cf . iv, 
1-5). In this respect the Book of Job is essentially a Wis- 
dom book ; its mashal type ('' parable," cf. xxvii, i ; xxix, i) 
being rather of the continuous than of the Solomonic 
mintage, connoting thus a riper and more organic stage 

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TREASURY OF THE CHOICE HEBREW CLASSICS 

of development. It has in fact reached a stage where, as a 
stereotyped scheme of doctrine, it is ready for criticism and 
revision. Instead of the genial and discursive thing it began 
with, touching lightly on the practical thoughts and obser- 
vations of experience, Wisdom has hardened into a solemn 
orthodoxy, and as such is charged, as orthodoxies are apt to 
be, with dogmatism and intolerance. In its attitude toward 
Job's affliction, as assumed by the friends, it betrays its 
attitude toward God. and toward human life. And this — 
to say the least of it — is not of the heart but of the head. 
It is stranded in its own rigid theory of life, its narrow 
intellectualism. 

With this hard, unsympathetic spirit of Wisdom it is that 
Job first comes int9 collision. Not that he has found its 
principles unsound, or that it has ceased to be a priceless 
asset of life (cf . per contra, xxviii) ; but as its familiar con- 
cepts are urged upon him, all with the same unfriendly 
implication, they sound insipid, stale, pointless, the merest 
"proverbs of ashes" (cf. vi, 6, 7 ; xii, 1—3 ; xiii, i, 2, 12). 
Somehow Wisdom, good as it is for theoretic and academic 
standards, has failed to touch the heart of this unique ex- 
perience. Its fitness, its application, is lacking (cf. xvi, 1-5). 

Consider how this was brought about. It began with the 
friends' deductions from Job's case, — deductions in strict 
accord with their Wisdom ideas. In their naive philosophy 
of cause and effect the sages had made a mechanical thing 
of it. Identifying wisdom with righteousness and folly with 
wickedness, they had linked reward infallibly with the one 
and ruin as infallibly with the other, leaving no room for 
exceptions.^ They had stereotyped this idea into a law of 
life, which to their thought was so clear that they made 
it work, both ways. If righteousness spelled reward and 
wickedness ruin, then when you see reward you see the 
righteousness that bought it, and when you see ruin you see 

1 Cf. remark, p. 449, 450, above. 
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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

the penalty of wickedness. In Job's afiQiction they saw ruin, 
not only what might have been attributed to chance but 
that aggravated ruin which meant the immediate wrath of 
God. Behold then the unspeakable wickedness of the man. 
God had said it, and that was enough. The human mind 
must echo God's mind, and say it too. 

Accordingly, after a season of dismay over Job's condition, 
so enigmatic to him, so lucid to them, the friends, whose 
felt cue was to withhold sympathy where God had withheld 
favor, entered upon their well-meant mission of convincing 
Job of wrongdoing and urging him by repentance and sub- 
mission to secure God's favor again. Their object for them- 
selves is to prove their orthodoxy true, for him to restore the 
conventional elements of reward and favor on their terms. 
What they urge is worthy and noble, — granted their point 
and plane of view. But they do not take account of the 
real fact, namely, Job's integrity; and as they go on they 
push their theory to an absurd extreme. It is just here that 
Job's encounter with them becomes heroic and in the end 
triumphant.- He is not mourning over his losses or longing 
for the restoration of goods and family and health. From 
the disease that wastes him he can expect only death. But 
living or dying he must be honest with himself and with 
life. And he has done nothing to deserve this affliction. 
To repent when there is no occasion would be an insincerity. 
To submit to his affliction as if it were deserved would be 
submitting to an injustice. To do these things on the score 
of wisdom would be to give wisdom a false and selfish 
motive. It would be like currying favor with God. Nay, in 
his controversy with the friends he brings their attitude to 
just this insincere pass (xiii, 7-1 1). They are pushing their 
wisdom to false views of God. Thus his encounter with 
the Wisdom cultus, as it is held in his day, lays it open to 
something very like Satan's sneer of the beginning, ''Doth 
Job — doth any man — fear God for nought? " And while 

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TREASURY OF THE CHOICE HEBREW CLASSICS . 

he thus finds the weak point in the Wisdom motive he 
grandly behes the cynic's sneer as regards himself. He is 
not serving God and shunning evil for a price. His loyalty 
to the godlike is a thing intrinsic. It belongs as truly to 
manhood as it does to manhood's Creator. 

Such is the answer that Job's response to affliction gives 
to Satan's sneer about the motive of Wisdom. While it 
searches this motive out with unsparing insight it does 
Wisdom an inestimable service by lifting it, as it were, 
above itself into the sphere of selfless manhood. 

2. While Satan's wager is fastened on the person of Job 
as the concrete embodiment of the test, it is no less truly 
directed, albeit slantwise, at the Divine order of 
fled Sense of ^^^ world, the order which has elicited such re- 
the Divine sponsc of Wisdom. He follows up his question, 
''Doth Job fear God for nought.?" with the 
further taunt, *' Hast not thou made a hedge about him, and 
about his house, and about all that he hath, on every side ? 
thou hast blessed the work of his hands, and his substance 
is increased in the land" (i, lo). As much as to say God 
has ordered His dealings with mankind on a system of ex- 
change, of barter. If Job's piety and righteousness are his 
shrewdly calculated means of buying God's favor, no less 
evidently 'God's favor, as expressed in protection- and pros- 
perity, is also in the market buying Job's allegiance. On 
this score there is nothing to hinder a cynic, judging by his 
own evil heart, from censuring the whole Divine order, with 
its imputed arrangement of rewards and punishments, as a 
refined and clever commercialism, wherein God and man, 
in watchful detachment from each other, are engaged each 
in humoring an essential self-interest. The Wisdom motive, 
as we have just seen, is susceptible to such criticism. God 
Himself, so judged, does not escape Satan's implication of 
being the abetter of such a world scheme. Perhaps that is 
why He so promptly agrees to the wager, though, as He 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

admits, unjustly (cf. ii, 3 ; ix, 17). He has faith that Job 
will stand the tremendous test and be true to essential God- 
likeness ; and if Job, then the manhood of which he is the 
chosen type. More than this : if so, then man as man has 
it in him to discover and adopt a better order of things, 
a higher Wisdom than barter. For, as we shall see, the 
Book of Job is steered toward this. And so here too the 
cynic's wager will fail. 

The answer to this implication of Satan's question comes 
from two sources : Job's sturdy remonstrance, and the words 
spoken from the whirlwind. It is, so to speak, an answer 
in which human intuition {thushiyah) and Divine revela- 
tion have equal and complementary shares, — as it were a 
negative and an affirmative fitted to each other .^ 

The negative element — what the Divine order is not — 
is'involved in Job's bewildered interrogation of his unmotived 
affliction. A sage among sages, expert in Wisdom lore, 
until this experience came he had never interpreted God's 
dealings with man otherwise than as the accepted Wisdom 
philosophy dictated. It had seemed ideally clear and ade- 
quate in his '' autumn days, when the friendship of God 
{sod^ ''the intimacy") was *over his tent" (xxix, 4).. But 
now that the supposed Divine stroke was upon him, the first 
thing to fail him was friendship, sympathy, fellow feeling 
(cf. vi, 14—23). All the sweet relationship between man 
and man, so far as mere Wisdom could interpret, had be- 
come a cold, unfeeling, impersonal thing, blind to the best 
values of life. But that was only the beginning. God too, 
on his hitherto-held theory, was mysteriously, cruelly es- 
tranged. No scheme of right and wrong, of justice and 
guilt, of sin and righteousness, could account for it. An 
arbitrary injustice had been done (cf. ix, 17), an outrage to 
his reason and sense of personal relationship, and he could 
ascribe it to no one but God. Yet he would not join with 

1 Cf. note, p. 462, above. 

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TREASURY OF THE CHOICE HEBREW CLASSICS* 

his friends and call it justice and desert. No ; rather, let- 
ting them entreat or rave as they would, he addressed his 
remonstrance straight to God, in a terrific indictment of His 
world order (ix) which one might call blasphemous if one 
did not reflect that it_was_i£gedjn_tlT^ behalf of the Godlike. - 
A God who will so treat the creatures of His hands, and 
give them no clue to the reason why, is acting out of char- 
acter (cf. X, 8-17). From this indictment, which has pri- 
mary relation to himself, a righteous man suffering as if he 
were wicked, he goes on later to the question which puzzled 
many pious observers of old, why the wicked were prospered 
in life apparently without reference to Divine laws of reward 
and penalty (cf. Psa. xvii, 13-15 ; xxxvii ; xlix ; Ixxiii). He 
lays it more to heart than do the Psalmists and the friends. 
These have explanations that satisfy them, either pious or 
savage ; but it dismays him to contemplate the seeming con- 
tradictions of the Divine order as interpreted on principles 
of orthodox Wisdom (xxi ; xxiv). Honest with himself, he 
is no less honest to fact, to things as they are, though the 
contemplation of them leaves him utterly bewildered as to 
God's dealings with His world. Yet all the while his plea 
is for the just, the open, the friendly ; his honesty is God- 
like ; he is drawing near to the true solution though as yet 
his eyes are holden. And one thing is becoming clear: 
God is not buying man's allegiance at a price; that can no 
more^ hold than that man at a price can bu}^ God^sjavor. 
The "hard olcTorder which Job once believed in and to which 
the friends still cling is ready for rectification ; Job himself, 
in his person, is besieging God's judgment seat for some- 
thing more divine, more human (cf. xxiii, 2-7). 

The affirmative answer, which after men's arguments 
liave spent themselves comes eventually to meet both 
Satan's criticism and Job's longing surmise, is contained in 
the words of God from the whirlwind, chapters xxxviii to 
xli. These majestic chapters, among the sublimest in all 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

Scripture, seem at first impression to answer nothing, and 
yet as the impression deepens they answer everything. They 
are Uke a cadence to the whole strain of the Book of Job, 
modulating from the stormy discords of controversy and the 
plaintive notes of woe to the large harmonies of a full- 
ordered world. It is the calm response of Divine revelation, 
indeed, but of the revelation that is going on all the while 
to those whose eyes can see, — not magic or miracle, not 
the exceptional things that one individual can claim, but the 
orderly ongoings of nature, full of a fathomless wisdom and 
power, in the reign of which earth and sea and sky, with 
their endlessly varied life and function, are adjusted to one 
supreme Will and to one another, so that every creature is 
free to live its own peculiar life and find its individual purpose 
in the sum of things. Such a revelation is open always and 
to alL It finds Job first, who feels his littleness before so 
vast a panorama of wisdom and power and his presumption 
in daring to question it (xl, 3-5). The opening of his eyes is 
the opening of a contrite heart, whose response is (xlii, 5,6): 

I had heard of thee by the hearing of the ear ; 
But now mine eye seeth thee : 
Wherefore I abhor myself, 
And repent in dust and ashes. 

It finds the friends not in any disposition to avail themselves 
of it but in speechless terror that God should speak at all ; 
and it is through Job's intercession that they come at last 
to the sense of forgiveness and favor. '' For ye have not 
spoken of me the thing that is right," is the Divine sum- 
mary, " as my servant Job hath " (xlii, 8). Even those indict- 
ing remonstrances of his, it would seem, so fearless of pain 
and darkness and death, were included in '' the thing that 
is right." They were aimed right, and out of a Godlike 
heart ; the rest was incidental. And as for the cynic's slant- 
wise gibe, that God was virtually buying Job's allegiance, 
there is no room for that any more. 

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TREASURY OF THE CHOICE HEBREW CLASSICS 

3. After all is said and summed, however, the supreme 
meaning of the book before us is Job himself, the man Job, 
th "perfect and upright" in devout manhood, and 

Wager was in spite of Uttermost trial remaining so. ''Ye 
^°° have heard of the patience of Job, and have seen 

the end of the Lord," is St. James's comment (James v,ii), 
the appreciative note of a brother of our Lord whose epistle 
may be not unfitly regarded as the New Testament book of 
Wisdom 1 (cf . James iii, 17). '' The patience of Job," — or, as 
one might say, consistency with himself and with the proved 
wisdom of life. In other words, in this Book of Job is 
drawn the full-length portrait of manhood, true, fearless, 
steadfast, measuring itself in extreme test with the mind of 
the universe, human, demonic, divine, and coming out on 
equal and victorious terms. It is the triumph of human 
personality, as it answers to its possibilities in the image 
and likeness of its Creator, 

It is this masterly portrayal that makes the Book of Job 
what may be called the pivotal book of the Old Testament 
dispensation, the book wherein human intuition and divine 
revelation meet in a hard-won and well-won cooperation, 
seeing eye to eye. 

Note. That valued endowment of thushiyah — intuitive wisdom 
— which we have noted in Proverbs and elsewhere plays a considerable 
part in the thought of the Book of Job, the word occurring five times. 
In V, 12, Eliphaz makes it inconsistent with craftiness. In vi, 13, Job, in 
the thick of his bewilderment, complains that it is driven away from him. 
In xi, 6, Zophar praises it as a twofold insight. In xii, 16, Job ascribes 
it to God as does Isaiah xxviii, 29. In xxvi, 3, Job denies it by ironical 
implication to the pedantic Bildad. The use of the word seems to mark 
the golden time of the Wisdom cultus, when the sages felt an element 
of mysticism in it ; in the later stages as represented in Ecclesiastes and 
others this phase of it seems to have passed ; cf ., for instance, Eccles. vii, 
24. It is Job's use of his experience, in fact, which proves the reality 
and genuineness of thushiyah? 

1 Cf. below, p. 636. ^ Cf. note, p. 462, above. 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

The astonishing thing in the wager that brings this about 
is that God should lend Himself so readily to a game of 
chance, — as if to Him, as to Satan, Job's conduct were 
a matter of hazard and guesswork. Natural enough to an 
unprincipled, unattached spirit like Satan, it does not look 
beseeming to God ; He ought, one would think, to be surer 
of His own handiwork. But — if one may dare say a thing 
so anthropomorphic of God — His consent to Satan's ex- 
periment was not a gamble. It was a faith. He had faith 
in the essential Godlikeness of human nature, a certitude that 
Job, was loyal not for reward or self -appeasement but because 
it was i7t him to be loyal to the Godlike. The Godlike was 
his truer element. If the experiment proved this true, then 
the severity of the test, instead of breaking Job down, would 
but affirm in deeper and surer terms the intrinsic worth of 
his manhood. 

And that is how the wager was won. The agreement in 
heaven, we will remember, was outside the scene ; it was 
Job who, all unwittingly, won it by the confirmed integrity 
of his own human personality. The successive strokes of 
his affliction as they fell found him steadfast and loyal in 
spite of wife's reproach and life's utter closure. So far as 
Satan's part was concerned, the wager was won speedily : 
the human in Job had won it. So far as God's share of the 
experiment was concerned, however, it was only just begun. 
It was the Godlike in Job that more than won it. The 
failure of friends, the futility of the conventional notions 
of Wisdom, the hard sense of God's dealings urged upon" 
him by friends anxl suffering alike, spurred the Godlike in 
Job to a sturdy creativeness. Out of the blank denial that 
seemed everywhere to have blighted the face of being he 
gradually shaped an Everlasting Yea. His creative unit was 
the imperative demand for sympathy, mutualness, sincerity, 
in the free relations of life, — the thing wherein the-friends 
failed him (cf. vi, 14-30 ; xii, 4, 5 ; xix, 13-22), nor human 

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TREASURY OF THE CHOICE HEBREW CLASSICS 

friends only but the whole divine-human order of things 
(ix, I-I2). He could not bear that this should be remote, 
one-sided, arbitrary. Accordingly, as human friendships and 
theories failed, his heart -began to reach out, as by timid ten- 
tacles, toward a sympathy which would not fail, a responsive 
heart which somewhere, somehow, would accord him justice 
and understanding. This, I think, is the main surge of Job's 
constructive spirit, an intuition based on his own conscious- 
ness of right and mercy (ix, 21-24). Beginning with the 
sense of what is not but ought to be, a personal medium of 
exchange (ix, 32-35), his longing shapes itself into a plea 
(xiii, 20-22), then grows in clearness and certitude until the 
imaged umpire (ix, 33) is believed in as a witness on high 
(xvi, 19-21) and then strongly asserted as his Redeemer 
(xix, 25-27, go' el; lit. ''next of kin") in consequence of 
whose advocacy God will no more be a stranger. On this 
uprise of the Godlike in man toward the manlike in God 
hangs all the rest of Job's complaint and ideal. As he 
identifies his disease with the immediate stroke of God his 
appeal is from the God arbitrary and ruthless to the God 
compassionate and friendly (x, 3-7). As his leprous body 
draws near the grave, with no hope of vindication on this 
side, he endeavors to turn the negative analogies of nature 
into a suggestion of life beyond (xiv, 7-17); but whether 
this may be affirmed or not, his final words proclaim him 
ready to enter upon it bearing before God the record of his 
earthly life with the pride of a prince (xxxi, 35-37). Thus, 
as we may say, the potent surge of the Godlike in Job's 
personality rises above earthly hardness and falsity and 
creates the thing that ought to be, the cooperative .sympathy 
and fellowship wherein (jod and man respond to each other 
in freedom of spirit. The wager has ceased to be ah experi- 
ment, has proved itself not motiveless but purposeful on the 
part of God. It has opened the way, God's way, to strong 
and creative manhood. 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

/'And Jehovah turned the captivity of Job, when he 
prayed for his friends " (xUi, lo). After the struggle to 
Hght and humble reconcilement comes intercession, with Job 
himself, as Eliphaz had blindly promised (cf. xxii, 26—30) 
and as Elihu had self -confidently offered (cf. xxxiii, 5-7), 
acting as advocate and daysman. One thinks of anotljer 
captivity, a literal fact of Hebrew history, a captivity even- 
tually turned to restoration, wherein an unnamed personage 
who was esteemed '' stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted " 
(Isa. liii, 3, 4 ; cf. Jer. xxii, 28), yet *'bare the sin of many, 
and made intercession for the transgressors." It yields an 
untold wealth of significance to meditate on these two 
captivities together, with their personal avails, as told in 
the Second Isaiah and the Book of Job ; they belong alike 
to the supreme disciplines and disclosures of human life. 

III. The Five Megilloth 

Immediately succeeding the Book of Job in this literary 
section of the Hebrew canon are five short Scripture books 
which by Hebrew readers came to be known as '' the five 
Megilloth " (lit. '' the five rolls "), for which term we might 
fitly substitute *' the five little classics," such being the 
popular estimate in which they were held. These, in the most 
usual Hebrew order, are : The Song of Songs, Ruth, Lam- 
entations, Ecclesiastes, and Esther. The fact that they are 
grouped by themselves, with a distinctive name for the col- 
lection, gives them a place of their own in the make-up of 
Biblical literature ; their individual meanings also as classics 
of special value call for their due of consideration. 



Uses and Estimates of the Group. Some notion of the 
peculiar distinction accorded to these Megilloth may be 
gathered from the fact that the reading of them was associ- 
ated with the observance of the recurring festival seasons in 

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TREASURY OF THE CHOICE HEBREW CLASSICS 

Jerusalem. Whether this was by public appointment or by 
a spontaneous social arrangement is not clear ; the latter 
In Jewish seems more likely. Nor is it immediately plain, 
Social Life except in the case of Lamentations and Esther, 
what connection was felt between the sentiment of the books 
and that of the feasts. One thinks most naturally of them 
as read not for stiff edification, as a didactic exercise, but 
for recreation, as a sweetener of reunion and genial inter- 
course. To such use they are well adapted. They may be 
regarded as their age's vehicle of popular entertainment and 
instruction, analogous to the drama of Shakespeare's time and 
the novel of our own. Thus it came about in the finished 
organization of the Jewish commonwealth, with its social and 
religious customs, that the Song of Songs was regularly read 
at the Feast of Passover, Ruth at the Feast of Weeks or 
Pentecost, Ecclesiastes at the Feast of Tabernacles, Esther 
at the Feast of Purim, and Lamentations on the Ninth of Ab, 
the fast day observed in commemoration of the destruction 
of Jerusalem. 

Of these five occasions four are festival seasons, only one, 
the one marked by the central book of the group, being a 
fast day. The general connotation of them was not legal 
nor prophetic, not austere at all but care-free and joyous ; 
times when, as it were, the mind and mood of the people 
could let itself go. Its sense of freedom and well-being is 
fitly indicated in Nehemiah's advice to the people when on 
the birthday of Judaism they were minded to take their law 
weeping : '' Go your way, eat the fat, and drink the sweet, 
and send portions unto him for whom nothing is prepared ; 
for this day is holy unto our Lord ; neither be ye grieved ; 
for the joy of Jehovah is your strength " (Neh. viii, lo ; 
cf. also Esth. ix, 19, 22). Freedom, deliverance, confidence, 
— such was the unspoken language of these festival occa- 
sions, a sentiment that the one memorial of the nation's 
dispersion did not avail to impair. 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

It is not without significance that these Megilloth, or little 
classics, should have come to be associated, as by a natural 
In Literary affinity, with the unprescribed observances of the 
Appreciation feasts. They too, in a sense not so true of other 
Scripture, are literary works in which the free Hebrew mind 
has let itself go. Written neither in criticism nor in propa- 
ganda, they have not the fear of orthodoxy nor the awe of 
mystic revelation before their eyes. They represent the 
thoughts and sentiments in which the popular mind can 
take pleasure or find itself reflected, without reference to the 
big monitions of priest or prophet. Perhaps that is why 
three of these books. Song of Songs, Ecclesiastes, and 
Esther, did not attain to a confirmed status in the canon 
until late and after much hesitation of estimate. They were, 
in a word, literary works that gave free rein to the sincerest 
thought and feeling, letting the question of official sanction 
take care of itself. If the canon was eventually liberal 
enough to include them, so much the more hospitable and 
tolerant the canon. 

Nor should we fail to note here the variety and the 
artistic quality observable in these works. All the leading 
Hebrew types of literary workmanship — song, idyl, elegy, 
mashal, plotted story — are in turn represented, each by 
what may be called a cabinet masterpiece, a specimen of 
finished literature in its kind. This fact does not look for- 
tuitous. It is as if the Hebrew literature, proudly conscious 
of itself, were minded to come out from its ancient seclu- 
sion and measure itself by the standards of the world.^ 
It was in a ripened and highly cultured period that this 
final section of the Old Testament was made up, a period 
wherein the most influential literature in the world was 
its rival. We do well to give this fact its due among the 
Hebrew men of letters in whose care were the uniquely 
educated people of a book. 

1 Cf. p. 431, above. 
[484] 

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TREASURY OF THE CHOICE HEBREW CLASSICS 

II 

Traits of the Individual Books. The choice and finished 
literary form observable in these Megilloth connotes some- 
thing quite other than pride of verbal or structural artistry. 
It is in its finely wrought way a reflection of the soul within. 
One may apply to it Spenser's words, 

For of the soule the bodie forme doth take ; 

For soule is forme, and doth the bodie make. 

• 
True as this is of all well-meant literature, we seem to recog- 
nize it more as in form and phrase the piece is more care- 
fully molded. It is dealing with a finer, more penetrative 
thrust of truth. This, I think, can be said of the works 
now under consideration. One discerns in each of them 
not so much a great mass or landmark of Biblical disclosure 
as a kind of cabinet piece, something clarifying, corrective, 
some view that makes for the true balance and perspective 
of things. There is about them a certain intimacy of spirit- 
ual relation, a tribute not only to the new and cogent but 
to the wholesome and familiar. Hence the value accorded 
to them in the observances of the festival seasons. 

Two of the five Megilloth, the Song of Songs and the 
Book of Ruth, have been in part discussed in the preceding 
chapters. They must needs come up again, however, in 
their canonical order, for the sake of their respective con- 
tributions to the treasury of Hebrew classics. 

I. In ''The Song of Songs, which is Solomon's" a 
notable departure is made from the lines of thought and 
Song of sentiment conventionally deemed Scriptural, — 
Songs: Can- whether to the help or hurt of sacred values 
Awakening has been a much-vexed question. It is the only 
of Love Scripture book that deals with the human passion 

of love, the love of the sexes for each other, that pervasive 
theme without which modern romance could hardly exist, 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

yet which reHgious asceticism and sanctimony have viewed 
askance as if it were a thing to be apologized for. As such 
it sounds at first reading Uke a Hterary interloper. The 
tone of the book is so richly Oriental and sensuous that 
both it and the Bible which sponsors it are placed as it were 
on trial, it for its frank disregard of the ascetic and prudish, 
the Bible for its warm hospitality to diverse works. Such 
has always been the book's equivocal fortune, which scholars 
hgive tried to adjust by giving it allegorical and esoteric 
meanings both Jewish and Christian. With these we need 
not concern ourselves here, at least until we have seen what 
simpler suggestion lies in the rich imagery and description 
of the poem. We may find, indeed, that the Bible, with its 
liberality of inclusion makes room therein for what is at 
once the most primal and the most sacred relation in life. 

Note. The Song of Songs as the supposed chef d''(Buvre of the 
Solomonic school of lyric poetry, and its relative purity of sentiment as 
compared with that of other Oriental literature, is spoken of on page 88, 
above. This early introduction of the poem does not imply an early 
date of composition or Solomonic authorship ; these depend upon quite 
other considerations. 

The tissue of the book, as the title intimates, is super- 
latively lyric, the loftiest reach of Hebrew song. It is the 
Its Literary ^y^^^ mood, with its singleness and intensity of 
Type and emotional states, that is throughout the control- 

aping ijj^g element. All along, however, a quasi- 
dramatic element supervenes, a suggestion of scene and 
personation, which tempts the reader to search for a coordi- 
nated plot but with elusive results. To make a built drama 
of it, or even something analogous to an Elizabethan masque, 
calls for too much artifice of interpretation ; it does not jus- 
tify itself against the next expositor. The Hebrew genius, 
at its freest in the impassioned lyric, was lame and clumsy 
in the dramatic ; the Book of Job has to some extent evinced 
that. We caHj however, call the book before us a lyric cycle. 

[486] 



TREASURY OF THE CHOICE HEBREW CLASSICS 

Somewhat like the Hbretto of a cantata, it is a series of lyric 
moods, called forth by conflicting interests or desires, and 
moving in music to a firm lyric situation, which latter em- 
bodies the underlying purpose of the whole. Thus, while 
not unobservant of dramatic concatenation, its parts remain 
true to the dictum later laid down by Milton that a living 
poem should be '' simple, sensuous, impassioned." It lets 
the passion of pure and invincible love sing its own story. 

A main difficulty in forming a consistent concept of this 
Song of Songs is in getting at a clear situation out of which 
. its elusive opulence of imagery and ardor may 

Conceived be cvolvcd. For such situation the sentiment and 
Situation atmosphere of King Solomon's court, realized or 
assumed, was evidently in the mind of the author. Was 
there something there, recorded or intimated, from which 
his creative genius could derive the tissue of his lyric story .? 
The Hebrew mind, with its strong sense of realism, did not 
take kindly to pure fiction ; it sought some peg of fact or 
of old-time tradition on which to hang its poem or story or 
discourse. Can such a concrete support be discerned under 
the verbal splendors of this Song of Songs } 

I think a very suggestive one can be cited. It is con- 
tained in the story of Abishag the Shunammite, who as 
a choicely selected maiden ministered to King David in his 
extreme old age (i Kings i, 1-4), and who after his death 
was desired, to his undoing, by Adonijah, Solomon's ambi- 
tious elder brother (i Kings ii, 13—25). There is nothing 
in the story thus far to supply substance for the song cycle, 
but there is something out of which such a healthy ideal 
as prevails in the song could naturally evolve it. If we add 
to the Abishag episode the thought of her earlier plighted 
love, and the equally probable thought that the amorous 
young king, after Adonijah-'s death, may have desired her 
— as the Oriental custom permitted — for his harern, we 
have all the factual suggestion needed for the situation of 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

this cantata, as also a direct channel of ideal toward its 
crowning portrayal of mated love. That the old-time story- 
was actually in the poet's- inventive mind is of course not 
to be asserted, but to put it there with its imagined sequel 
does much to give ground and meaning to a situation 
which the poem itself has left somewhat vague. 

Note. It will be remembered that the composition of the Song of 
Songs belongs to the post-exilic period of the scribe and the man of 
letters, when the older literature was the quarry and gleaning-ground for 
edifying values suited to newer needs and tastes. A prominent trait of 
this period has been noted in what is said of the use of midrash, or 
interpretative comment. See page 407 above, footnote, for the existence 
of such midrash in the Books of Chronicles ; see also page 419 for the 
view of the Book of Jonah as a virtual midrash on 2 Kings xiv, 25-27. 
If we hesitate to ascribe to the Song of Songs the dignity and solemnity 
of a midrash, may we not at least — in musical parlance — regard it as 
a kind of fantasia, or love rhapsody, which, however, modulates in the 
end to something worthy of a place among the five Megilloth .'^ Fi?iis 
coronat opus. 

It is not easy on any consideration to sift and assign the 
various elements of the poem, modeled as this doubtless 
How this is ^^^ ^^ ^^^ customary wedding-week celebrations. 
Borne out in among the solos, antiphons, and choruses of its 
°^°^ setting, and through the progressive stages of its 
sentiment. In this respect the poem ranks as one of the 
most puzzling books of Scripture. To reduce its wayward 
emotions to a situation like the one just described, however, 
seems to me the simplest and most lucid solution available. 
Consider how on the whole the action — if such it may be 
called -. — answers to it. Looking under the scenic and vocal 
setting we note that two main characters dominate the course 
of the poem: King Solomon (cf. iii, 6-1 1 ; viii, 11, 12), 
appearing first in the guise and with all the puissance of 
a royal wooer, and later . put off with another award ; and 
a certain north-country maiden (Shulammite = Shunammite, 
vi, 13), whose solicited love, being already plighted elsewhere, 

[488] 



TREASURY OF THE CHOICE HEBREW CLASSICS 

refuses response to all the king's pleas and praises, and in 
the end emerges stanchly faithful to her previous afifiance. 
Thus we may say an essential spiritual force was revealed. 
For Solomon's assumed time and Orientalism was portrayed 
the victory of the heart over the harem, and for all times 
and minds the victory of essential love over the self-indulgent 
charms of the flesh and the world. It is like a translation 
of love into selfless and spiritual terms. The Shulammite, 
responding, as mindful of royalty, in all gentleness and lowly 
homage, yet remains true to the dictates of her own steadfast 
heart. It is for her not a willfulness but a life. Her final 
sense of the issue, as expressed to her restored beloved, is 

Set me as a seal upon thy heart, 

As a seal upon thine arm : 

For love is strong as death ; 

Jealousy is cruel as Sheol ; 

The flashes thereof are flashes of fire, 

A very flame of Jehovah. 

Many waters cannot quench love, 

Neither can floods drown it : 

If a man would give all the substance of his house for love, 

He would utterly be contemned (viii, 6, 7). 

And this is not merely her verdict, it is the constructive idea 
of the Song of Songs itself, wrought out in a lilt as delicate 
as that which makes the charm of modern lyric and romance. 
One might without indignity to sacred values match her 
melody in the words of Sir Philip Sidney's '' Ditty " : 

My true-love hath my heart, and I have his, 
By just exchange one for another given ; 
I hold his dear, and mine he cannot miss, 
There never was a better bargain driven. 

Can we call a book so wrought and resolved, though quite 
oblivious of pious or allegorical involvements, unworthy of 
a place in holy Scripture .? I think not. I think that for its 
portrayal of Biblical values it may be put as a companion 
piece to A Worthy Woman and Our Lady Wisdom. 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

' Bear in mind, however, that we are dealing here not with 
a developed drama but with a strain of song, a lyric cycle 
. designed not to be declaimed but sung. Its scene 
and Vocal was not Staged but imagined ; if read, as the book 
Setting came to be at the Passover season, it was read 

in the distinctive consciousness of the song magic of style. 
And here we may note in what masterly yet delicate way 
the situation we have conceived is set forth in music. On 
the one side Solomon's, the would-be bridegroom's, appeal 
is represented by two choruses: a palace chorus of brides- 
maids, ''daughters of Jerusalem" (cf. i, 5 ; iii, 11), singing 
sometimes the conventional bridal lays, sometimes antiph- 
onally with the Shulammite maiden, and a male chorus 
.of royal retainers coming up from the wilderness, presum- 
ably the bride's country home, to the palace where she is 
retained and where the wedding is to be, singing her charms 
in the king's name (cf. iii, 7, 8 ; vi, 12, 13). All the splendid 
claims of court and harem are urged on this side ; one is 
tempted to quote in parallel Psalm xlv, 10, 1 1 (called by title, 
"A Song of Loves"). On the other side is only the 
Shulammite, with her solo voice, virtually captive, homesick 
for the free and fruitful country of her birth, lovesick for 
her absent loved one, singing her yearnings and searchings 
for him, lapsing into dreamy and crooning mood as of 
one entranced, and guarding her personality by a reiterated 
caveat of refrain, 

I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem, 
By the gazelles, and by the hinds of the field, 
That ye awaken not, nor stir up love, 
Until it please ^ (ii, 7 ; iii, 5 ; viii, 4). 

But it is in her song that one finds the real power and purity 
of love, and it prevails. Compared with the voluptuous hint- 
ings sung by the daughters of Jerusalem (i, 2-ii, 8 ; vi, 4-9), 

1 Translation of the Jewish version, 1917. The translation of viii, 4, 
follows more correctly the reading of the margin. 

[490] 



TREASURY OF THE CHOICE HEBREW CLASSICS 

and the sensuous laudations from the mascuHnity of Solo- 
mon's mighty men (iv, 1-15 ; vii, 1-9), her tender solo, 
so full of the sweet call of the springtide (ii, 8-17) and 
of dreamy longing for reunion with her beloved in her 
mother's house (iii, 1-4; v, 2-16; vii, lo-viii, 3), seems 
to penetrate beneath the heated artificialities of court and 
harem and give her chaste beauty and fidelity a power *' ter- 
rible as an army with banners," before which the amorous 
monarch stands abashed (vi, 4, 5). His words. 

Turn away thine eyes from me, 
For they make me afraid, 

read like a confession of defeat. Such, love as this no sen- 
suous or worldly allurements can either waken or subdue. 
It dwells in the holiest place where the purest passions of 
the inner life have their home. Its expression is beyond 
the shows of the stage ; it is open only to the music and 
magic of song. And such is the lyric vehicle of this first 
and finest book of the five Megilloth. 

Note. It may aid the reader in verifying or otherwise testing the 
above-given view of the Song of Songs if we note here the stages, qf 
canticles, in which, as I conceive, the cantata progresses. A key sentence 
is given with each one. 

Canticle I (Chapters i, 2-iii, 5) : 

The king hath brought me into his chambers. ... 

I am black though comely, 

O ye daughters of Jerusalem, ... 

Look not upon me. 

[Containing the Shulammite's escape in dream from the solicitations 
of the palace to the freedom of home and beloved.] 

Canticle II (Chapters iii, 6-v, 9) : 

Who is this that cometh up from the wilderness 
* Like pillars of smoke ? . . . 
Behold, it is the litter of Solomon ; 
Threescore mighty men are about it. 

[Containing the Shulammite's escape, again in dream, from the loud 
wooings of the king to the search for her beloved.] 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

Canticle III (Chapters vi, lo-viii, 4) : 

Who is she that looketh forth as the morning, 
Fair as the moon, clear as the sun, 
Terrible as an army with banners ? 

[Containing the Shulammite's escape from the chariots of Solomon's 
retinue and the sword dance (vi, 1 3) in her native country, with the final 
rebuke to the pertinacious pursuits to which she has been subjected :] 

I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem, 
Why should ye awaken, or stir up love. 
Until it please ?i (viii, 4). 

Canticle IV (Chapter viii, 5-16): 

Who is this that cometh up from the wilderness. 
Leaning upon her beloved ? 

[Containing the triumph of love, in various settings of solo, duet, 
and chorus.] 

The frank sensuousness of the Song of Songs, so uncon- 
genial to the ascetic piety of the sanctuary, kept it long from 
an assured place in the Hebrew canon ; but at length the 
Synod of Jamnia, a.d. 90, gave it final approval, and it 
became so great a favorite that about a.d. 120 a distin- 
guished rabbi was maintaining of it, '' The whole world does 
not outweigh the day when the Song of Songs was given 
to Israel ; while all the Writings are holy, the song is holiest 
of all." 2 For us this tribute is not merely to the excellence 
of the book but to a certain inwardness and liberality of the 
Jewish mind which we do not well to shut out from our 
appreciation of its Biblical products. 

2. From the springtime song of awakened love (cf. Song, 
ii, 8-14), read and cherished at the Passover season, we 
pass to the old-time story of Ruth, which was read at Pente- 
cost when, seven weeks after the Passover, the first fruits 
of the harvest were presented before Jehovah. We have 

1 So, according to the more accurate Jewish translation. 

2 McFadyen, " Introduction to the Old Testament," p. 282. 

[492] 



TREASURY OF THE CHOICE HEBIIEW CLASSICS 

already considered the probable time and occasion of its corn- 
position.i It was viewed there as a gentle appeal, in a time 
„ , of stern puritanism, against the risrors of racial ex- 

Ruth : Idyl . ' o o 

of Family clusiveness and as a liberal hint toward the freer 
Loyalty and oris^in of the Davidic house. Such immediate con- 

Fidelity ^ . 

notation, however, must needs pass with the mol- 
lifying influences of time ; but the idyl, with its permanent 
loveliness and beauty, remained an undying classic. As such 
it took in time its appropriate and unquestioned place in this 
third section of the Hebrew canon, among the Megilloth,. 
associated with the common felicities of family and indus- 
trial life. With the translation of the Old Testament into 
Greek, however, and the consequent rearrangement of liter- 
ary estimates, it was relegated to an earlier period, where, as 
in our Bible, it comes just after the Book of Judges. Here 
too it works its gentle influence, as we read the Scripture 
in historic course, furnishing as it does a sweet sense of the 
amenities that could and did -exist in the crude and anarchic 
times of the Judges, when as yet '' there was no king in Israel ; 
every man did that which was right in his own eyes " (cf. 
Judg. xxi, ^5). It is good for our conception of those rough 
times and deeds to have this humane and friendly supple- 
ment to our sense of " the days when the judges judged " 
(Ruth i, i). From a too prevailing record of lawless wrong 
one turns the leaf to read of a house where extreme poverty 
is not abject and of a landed estate where wealth is open- 
handed and kindly, of the tender affection and fidelity of 
womanhood, and of the noble chivalry of the *' next of kin " 
(Heb. go el) whose right and disposition it is to redeem and 
protect (cf. Ruth ii, 20; iii, 9-iv, 12 with Lev. xxv, 25-27 
and Job's supreme faith, Job xix, 25-27). Thus we may not 
unfitly call this Book of Ruth the book of native human 
kindliness, the book wherein are recognized ties of native 
goodness, ties deeper than land or creed or race. 

1 See above, pp. 417, 418. 
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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

3. In the middle of the yearly round of festival seasons 
came the sad observance of a national fast day, the fast of 
Lamenta- the Ninth of Ab, in commemoration of the burn- 
tions: Eie- jj^pr of the citv and temple by Nebuchadnezzar 

giacEchoof ° ^ i-. 

Israel's Sub- (2 Kmgs XXV, 8, 9 = J er. In, 12, 13). On this 
jugation ^^y ^^g j.g^(^ ^j^g Book of Lamentations, a series 

of five elegies composed in the kinah measure, and included 
in these Megilloth as a literary heritage from a time not 
long after the beginning of the Chaldean exile. 

Note. The kinah, or lament, which was for occasions of grief what 
the song was for occasions of joy, is defined above (pp. 67, 68), in con- 
nection with its first occurrence in Scripture, when David sang his dirge 
over the deaths of Saul and Jonathan (2 Sam. i). In the Book of Lamen- 
tations the elegy reaches at once its most momentous occasion and its 
most finished and, as it were, monumental form. 

'' The Lamentations of Jeremiah " is the title that we 
read in our English Bible, in both the Authorized and the 
Revised version. The book ,has long been held to have 
been written by the prophet Jeremiah ; naturally enough, 
because the event it memorializes occurred in his day, and 
because much of his prophecy is in a similar strain. In the 
Greek version, accordingly, these lamentations have been 
transferred from their place in the Megilloth to the pro- 
phetic section, as a kind of appendix to the Book of Jeremiah. 
In. the original, however, they are not marked either by title 
(except the first word, 'eikah, '' How ") or by attribution of 
authorship. They cannot be confidently ascribed to Jeremiah ; 
nor, indeed, as we compare the two productions, have they 
anything of his vehement and trenchant style. They were 
read or chanted, too, in quite different mood from that which 
conditioned his prophecy. 

The mood that governs the book, in fact, is not invigor- 
ating. To the ordinary reader it is that of one long 
monotone of sorrow, almost unrelieved by pointed phrase 
or progress of thought, — a trait so insistent as to provoke 

[ 494 ] 



TREASURY OF THE CHOICE HEBREW CLASSICS 

inquiry after its cause. I think we may find this in its 
monumental character. The five elegies of which it is made 
• up are, in a word, not unlike a huge epitaph, 
Work of marked as such by the workmanship of the verse. 
Hebrew This docs not appear — only the level monotony 
of it appears — in a translation. Four of the five 
poems (chapters i to iv) are composed acrostic-wise in the 
alphabetic verse which was deemed the perfection of poetic 
finish and artistry .^ They are like cameo work. One cannot 
but judge, however, that a care so meticulous for verbal 
form must needs be taken at some expense to the urge and 
passion of the thought. And, indeed, the work in some meas- 
ure bears this out. It is all in one minor key ; it has little 
rise and fall of emotion or ideal. The Book of Lamentations 
is more truly a work of poetic verse-craft moving over a mod- 
erate range of feeling than of poetic fire stirring the soul. 

Note, The reader will note on looking over the book that each of 
chapters i, ii, iv, and v consists of just twenty-two verses — the number 
of letters in the Hebrew alphabet — and that chapter iii has sixty-six, 
just three times that number. In the Hebrew chapters i, ii, and iv 
maintain the acrostic succession by the first word of each verse or 
stanza; chapter v, the only one not alphabetic, has the same number 
of verses in the stricter and briefer mashal couplet. In chapter iii, the 
most highly wrought of the elegies both in form and sentiment, twenty- 
two triplets of lines, three successive lines beginning with each letter, 
make up the sixty-six verses. Thus in this third and central book of the 
five Megilloth we find the supreme artistic achievement of the kinah or 
elegiac measure. It is a far cry from the strong outburst of David's dirge. 

We would not leave the Lamentations, however, with a 
note of disparagement. The care for finished workmanship 
A St • f ^^^ ^^^ ^^ instinctive care for permanence, for 
Undying that Consummate style which is the antiseptic of 
Patriotism thought. As these plaintive elegies, written by 
a poet of the homeland while the calamity of downfall and 
dispersion was yet young, was a heartfelt memorial of the 

1 For alphabetic poetry in the Hebrew literature, see above, p, 446. 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

most determining event of Hebrew history, so both for 
inherent worth and for the response accorded them they 
proved to be, as they still are, a mojmmentjim aere perennius. 
Read from the ages before Christ at the annual fast of the 
fifth month, they renewed their memorial lament after the 
final overthrow of the Jewish state a.d. 70, and may still 
be heard to-day, as crooned or chanted, at the wailing-place 
by the Temple wall in Jerusalem. Thus, with their pervad- 
ing note of resignation and devout endurance, they are a 
monument to the extraordinary tenacity and resiliency of 
the Jewish character in its devotion to the land and faith of 
the fathers, its undying patriotism of the heart. It is not 
seemly to despise or disparage such steadfastness as this, 
however expressed. 

In reading these plaintive elegies one feels the pressure 
of something very tender, very chastened, very noble. Their 
note of submission to disaster and dispersion in a spirit so 
contrite, so acquiescent, so enduring, above all in such forti- ? 
tude of hope (see especially iii, 19-31) redeems them grandly 
from the morbidness of woe. It is not the note of weak- 
ness but of resolute recourse to the Source of strength. 
A nation consciously treading the Valley of Humiliation is 
minded not to make grief a luxury but to discover its mean- 
ing and discipline. The concluding petition of the prayer 
which constitutes the fifth elegy. 

Turn thou us unto thee, O Jehovah, and we shall be turned ; 
Renew our days as of old (v, i\)} 

may stand as the keynote to which the whole book, with its 
chastened artistry of words, is tuned. And so this central 
roll of the Megilloth, hallowed by the annual fast of the 
ninth of Ab, remains to all time as the elegiac echo of 
Israel's most searching experience, a subjugation which did 
not subjugate but refined. 

^ Repeated as a colophon at the end of the Jewish version. 

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TREASURY OF THE CHOICE HEBREW CLASSICS 

4. As we continue to read these Megilloth in their allotted 
order the impression grows that there was a deeply felt con- 
nection in each case between the sentiment of 
Ecclesiastes : 
Ripened Wis- the book and that of the festival season at which 

dom of Dis- j^ ^y^g read. We know this was so with two of 

illusion 

them, Lamentations and Esther, for the book and 
the observance were mutually dependent. Whether it was 
equally so with the others raises the interesting question 
what the old-time feasts really meant when after centuries 
of laxity or discontinuance they became an organic feature 
of the later law and cultus. With this question, however, 
our only present concern is as to its literary aspect. And 
of this not the least interesting inquiry is as to the possible 
connection of the baffling, estranging Book of Ecclesiastes 
with the most lucid and care-free observance of the year, 
the Feast of Tabernacles. The latest prophecy associated 
this feast with the consummation of Israel's holy destiny 
(Zech. xiv, 16-21) ; and here one of the latest-written books 
of the Old Testament, the book that encountered the great- 
est difficulty of inclusion in the Hebrew canon, seems in 
superficial impression to have associated all human wisdom 
and labor, this crowning season included, with vanity and 
disillusion. What can a fair valuation of Biblical literature 
say to this ? ^ 

We are working, it will be remembered, in that stratum 
of Biblical truth which urges no claim, as do law and 

prophecy, to direct revelation from Jehovah ; it 
Imputed presupposes rather the free uprise of the human 
Source and heart and mind from beneath .^ We are in a 
^^^ literary period also when things were written and 

implicitly accepted in the name and imputed influence of 
great personages of history. We have seen how true this 
was in Psalms and Proverbs ; how David and Solomon lived 

1 Question answered in third paragraph below. 

2 See above, pp. 428, 429. 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

again in the songs and maxims that somehow emanated 
from their gifts of mind and heart. David's piety became 
thus the dominant spiritual force of this third section of the 
canon ; but for the secular affairs of life Solomon's brilliancy 
and versatility were a close second. He has already figured 
in these Megilloth, in connection with the Song of Songs ; 
ages later, too, his name is potent to designate " The Wis- 
dom of Solomon," an Apocryphal book, written about 
lOO B.C., and "Psalms of Solomon," written close on the 
confines of the Christian era.^ 

It is by an assumed name that the Book of Ecclesiastes 
is attributed to Solomon, — a virtual intimation that the 
book is his only symbolically. Its title is "Words of Kohe- 
leth. Son of David, King in Jerusalem," the Hebrew name 
Koheleth being represented in our versions by its Greek 
equivalent " Ecclesiastes " and translated " Preacher." There 
is nothing in the book in the least ecclesiastical or clerical — 
more nearly the opposite, rather ; nor, indeed, does the writer 
assume the role either of Solomon or of a king except for 
two chapters (i, ii) merely in order to draw proper signifi- 
cance from two traditional qualities of Solomon, his wisdom 
and his riches (cf. i Kings iii, 11-13 ; iv, 29-34; x, 23- 
27). His real function is that of a sage, a counselor or 
teacher of the people (cf. xii, 9, 10), who as his life's busi- 
ness " composed and compiled and arranged many lessons " ^ 
(mashals). This puts his work in the class of Wisdom 
books, a distinction which it shares with the books of Prov- 
erbs and Job, — the three making up a characteristic and 
homogeneous body of didactic literature among the Scripture 
books, it is as a body of sage and ripened counsel — of 
a wisdom which in all its worldly adventures stayed by its 

1 See above, p. 85, note. 

2 I quote here my own translation, taking occasion thereby to call, atten- 
tion to a book of mine, "Words of Koheleth" (Houghton Mifflin Com- 
pany, Boston). 

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TREASURY OF THE CHOICE HEBREW CLASSICS 

royal practitioner (ii, 9) and proved its diametric contrast to 
folly (ii, 1 3) ; which with all its seeming scorn of consist- 
ency yet obtained and maintained a footing in that most 
hospitable of books the Bible — that we are called upon to 
estimate this Book of Ecclesiastes. It matches Job's bold- 
ness — not to say audacity — before God (cf ,, for instance, 
Job ix, X, xiii, 13-19) with an equal audacity toward the 
ongoings of the world, pronouncing its verdicts unsparingly 
yet with a sad sincerity. '' And further, because the Preacher 
was wise, he still taught the people knowledge " (xii, 9). 
His words, cherished as a roll of the Megilloth, became the 
favorite literary entertainment of the favorite festal season 
of the year. 

^ Recurring to this curious fact, we may take, I think, this 
Feast of Tabernacles, as it came to be observed in the 
matured Judaism, as furnishing in a way the key 
Attitude to its attitude and spirit. Read at the close of the 
and Spirit harvest season, when, as it were, the year's account 
of stock was taken with its gains and its ills, the book also 
is a clear-eyed, unsparing account of the stock of human 
life ''under the sun," — its profits and its deficits, or at 
lowest avails its salvages, as measured not by prophetic vision 
or religious emotion but by matter-of-fact reckoning and 
common sense. Its keynote, as I hear it, is not its abrupt 
exclamation of the wholesale vanity of things. That is only 
its postulated and presupposed setting, expressed at first, it 
is true, with the one-sided intensity of Oriental style. The 
real keynote and ruling idea is sounded in the question that 
immediately follows, '' What profit hath man of all his labor 
wherein he laboreth under the sun.?" — a question asked, 
as one can see from its calmer repetition (iii, 9), not so 
much for frantic denial as for honest and sober answer. The 
ground term of the book, reverberating in every inquiry, 
is the word "profit" (Heb. yithron, "surplusage," "resid- 
uum ") ; and while the author concedes vanity in every phase 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

and pursuit of life, he does this rather as a point of depar- 
ture than as a point of approach. Frankly owning all that 
pessimism or- materialism may urge, his virtual inquiry is, 
" What of it ? " In other words, his concern is rather for 
positive avails of life, however great or small these may be, 
than for leaving life, after all is summed up, in a hopeless 
welter of negation. It is simple wisdom to take account of 
the under side ; it is candid wisdom, if the balance sheet 
shows only meager surplusage or salvage, to own the fact 
and order life accordingly. Such, as I deem it, and not a 
too hastily imputed pessimism, is the constructive aim and 
spirit of this Book of Ecclesiastes. 

This-, while it seems to reduce human life, common and 
privileged alike, as by a vigorous method of residues, to 
plainest and as it were business terms, yet really makes 
room in the Biblical inclosure for the modern spirit that 
seems to many so unbiblical, the spirit of science and intrepid 
progress of thought, the resolute disposition to " see life 
steadily and see it whole." In this respect it is the most 
modern book in the Bible, the favorite of what timid reli- 
gionists are pleased to call skepticaland froward minds. It 
faces facts, the ugly along with the pleasant. It dispels, not 
without sadness, the illusions that the too fond or too dis- 
cordant propensities of human nature engender. It is not 
afraid to be agnostic about some things, to call life from its 
point of view a baffling thing. Here, of course, we must 
needs reckon with its prevailing point of view. We have 
had the prophetic, the legalistic, the devotional, — prophet, 
priest, and king have contributed their quotas to Biblical 
truth. This is the matured Wisdom point of view, from 
which must be reckoned both avails and limitations. Through 
this book, we may say, is admitted into the tolerant reposi- 
tory of Scripture the most practical, most nearly adequate 
message that the Wisdom insight, as such, could vouchsafe 
to man in his dim encounter with toil and time and chance. 

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TREASURY OF THE CHOICE HEBREW CLASSICS 

As regards what may be called its structure, the Book of 
Ecclesiastes bears the marks of being in part the original 
Its Survey composition of the author, in part a compilation 
and Summa- of mashals from various sources loosely arranged 
Problem of ^^ Support his main thesis, — thus answering to 
Life the author's description of his literary method, 

xii, 9-1 1. Written for the most part in a rather incisive 
prose, it rises at times, and especially toward the end (cf . x, 
16, onward), into a somewhat free imitation of the Solomonic 
mashal, culminating in the familiar poem, xi, 7 to xii, 8, 
which may fitly be entitled ''Rejoice and Remember." ^ 
Many sayings interspersed through the book, as they are 
unusually epigrammatic and adage-like (cf., for instance, the 
proverbs about fools, ii, 14; iv, 5 ; vii, 5-7; x, i), suggest 
that the author, like Solomon before him, drew for illustra- 
tive material on current maxims, as contributing their share 
to an all-round survey of life. 

Beginning with a short proem, or introduction (i, 2-1 1), 
in which he states his negative in most absolute terms, the 
sage Ecclesiastes, in his quest for residuum {yithron), as- 
sumes the mind of King Solomon, the traditional type of 
wisdom and wealth, long enough (i, 12-ii, 26) to get the 
monarch's supposed verdict on the yields of life at its best ; 
after which, no longer in kingly role, he goes on in amplifi- 
cation to survey the depths and shoals of human labor and 
experience under the sun. Two things seem to have proved 
too much for the sage-king's power to solve : the emptiness 
of all that wealth and wisdom can give, and the stark equality 
of wise and fool alike in death (cf. ii, 12-17) ; so from his 
royal height he is forced to the conclusion that '' there is 
nothing better for a man than that he should eat and drink 
and make his soul enjoy good in his labor " (ii, 24). But 
this is already a residuum, a thing worth while — or, as he 
says, ''from the hand of God"; and as the sage goes on 

1 As in my " Words of Koheleth," p. 345. 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

following out in detail the same two enigmas that perplexed 
the king, it reappears in enhanced cheer and climax, as 
a foil to the successive bafflements brought to view (see iii, 
12, 13 ; V, 18-20; ix, 7-10); and at the ''end of the mat- 
ter," when ''all hath been heard," the various counsels of 
heartenment are condensed into the sound and tried prin- 
ciple of earthly Wisdom, " Fear God, and keep his com- 
mandments ; for this is the whole man" (xii, 13).! Thus 
this Book of Ecclesiastes, for all its sad sense of vanity and 
disillusion, is on the whole constructive. If not optimistic 
— its plane and era before life and immortality came to light 
would not let it be that — it is at least melioristic. It has 
sought the more livable alternative in a hard and crooked 
world, and found it. 

Yet along with this body of wise counsel there still re- 
mains a clinging sense of unfinality, of limitation. The sage 
breaks off some of his most penetrative findings to exclaim, 
" All this have I tried by wisdom ; I said, ' Oh, let me be 
wise ! ' — and it was far from me. Far off, that which is ; 
and deep, deep — who shall find it.?" (vii, 23, 24).^ He 
has been pursuing different lines of thought from those laid 
out by prophets and priests. Prophetic vision has long sub- 
sided (cf. Psa. Ixxiv, 9). The name of Jehovah, the God 
Who Is,^ always in the mouth of priests, does not occur 
in his book. To be uncertain about Him who Is, is to be 
baffled by the involvements of That which is. One notes 
the same uncertainty in the plebeian words of Agur (cf. 
Prov. XXX, 2-4). Our book is in fact the utterance of a dis- 
tinctively human wisdom, human insight, in that stratum of 
Hebrew thought which ignores transcendental knowledge 
or disclosure.* Its ripened utterance, sad and sincere, is 

1 Cf. above, p. 450. 

2 I quote here my own rendering, see my ''Words of Koheleth," p. 300. 

3 Cf. above, pp. 47-50. 

4 The passage just quoted is a virtual denial of thushiyah. 

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TREASURY OF THE CHOICE HEBREW CLASSICS 

indeed the Wisdom of disillusion, and as such the chill of 
unfinality and limitation is upon it. It marks a point where 
Scripture must pause for new light and power. 

I have spoken of the Book of Ecclesiastes as in the class 
with Proverbs and Job.^ Its thought structure has in effect 
, „ , ^ so intimate a relation to that of the other books 

As Correlate 

with Prov- that we may regard the three as making up 
erbs and Job together, whether so intended or not, a kind of 
trilogy, in which Hebrew Wisdom is set forth in ordered 
and progressive utterance, making thus a distinctive strain 
of Scripture truth, a strain wrought out to a clear and candid 
sense of its values, its trend, its limits. And this is done 
not by reducing Wisdom to a philosophy but by putting its 
ideals and theories to successive tests of personal experience. 

Let us note in brief outline how this is. 

It all centers round the idea of success or failure. The 
Book of Proverbs — miscellaneous maxims of conduct 
brought together by sages and impressed by the allegorical 
Lady Wisdom — resolves itself into a practical manual of 
success. In other words, its precepts one and all make for 
one comprehensive end, reward, — by which we mean the 
gains, the wages, the profits of wise and reverent living, 
as expressed in terms of wealth, welfare, honor, health, 
family, long life, a peaceful death. To this end it summons 
the sagacity, the prudence, the piety, the teachableness, not 
excluding the cleverness and watchful shrewdness, of the 
well-endowed man ; in fact it is a call to the efficient man- 
agement of life on high but essentially self-regarding prin- 
ciples. With all this the Book of Proverbs sets itself to 
deal, and its promise of reward, as also its threat of failure, 
is firm and absolute. 

At this point of the trilogy the author of the Book of 
Job takes up the theme. He does not dispute results or 
conditions ; these are sound and sure ; rather he institutes 

1 Cf. above, p. 49S. 
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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

a deeper inquiry. It is as if he had said to his heart, The 
reward is all right, what of the man ? what has personal 
experience to say ? In answer he brings from the familiar 
traditions of the past a man perfect and upright, who has 
earned and in fullest measure enjoyed the material rewards 
of earthly life and then in one swift, unmotived catastrophe 
lost them. There was nothing left him to show for a well- 
spent and godly life. The Book of Job, as its contribution 
to the growing trilogy, tells the sequel. Job's steadfast con- 
sistency, in integrity and heart-loyalty, proved that the hope 
of reward is not the determining motive of sterling manhood. 
There is a fealty to God and truth which is independent of 
work and wage or of godliness and gain.^ 

As Wisdom lore becomes still more seasoned and dis- 
criminating the sage Ecclesiastes at length takes up the 
theme by a new grounding -of the test question. No dis- 
paragement to Wisdom ; it is still the polar opposite to 
folly ; but it is as if he had asked his heart. What is that 
thing reward, after all } what the profit } To get at the 
answer he, like his predecessor, draws on the personal ex- 
perience of the past. He assumes the mind of the most 
admired personage of Hebrew history. King Solomon, who 
with his superb gifts of wealth and wisdom has all the rewards 
that heart could wish and all the ability to appraise them-. 
If he cannot tell what life is worth, in pay and profit, no 
one can. And his verdict on it all is '' Vanity of vanities." 
Ecclesiastes carries on his inquiries, descending from the 
kingly station to the laborer's, the common man's. And 
everywhere he finds the same flat level of prospect, the same 
famine of surplusage. '' All the labor of man is for his 
mouth, yet also is the soul not filled " (vi, 7), such is one 
of his sad confessions. That thing reward is not of the life, 
but extrinsic, exotic, a thing outside. Life itself is an ulti- 
mate fact. It has no equivalent ; it will accept no substitute. 

1 Cf. summary, " Epic of the Inner Life," p. 20. 
[504] 



TREASURY OF THE CHOICE HEBREW CLASSICS 

It must be its own reward and blessedness, or nothing.^ 
Nothing for it then but to fall back upon the life itself, 
with its goods and ills, making it fair and faithful in the 
fear of God. 

Thus in his correlation with the other books, which corre- 
lation from this view seems like a thing designed, the sage 
Ecclesiastes rounds out the symmetrical body of Wisdom 
literature, ending it essentially where it began. But not as 
it began. A great sense of values and safeguards and limits 
has supervened. Much has been gained to its unbiased 
surveys of life ; nothing lost. And if it must come out on 
a great negative, it is something, it is much, to have emerged 
to a great sense of need. The modern poet's words, 

'T is life, whereof our nerves are scant, 
Oh life, not death, for which we pant ; 
More life, and fuller, that I want, 

seem fitly to embody the spiritual surge and urge of our 
sage's quest. And if in his dim day it se^ms far and futile, 
yet unsurmised by him a day is soon to come when a Greater 
than earthly sage will say, " I came that they may have life, 
and may have it abundantly" {perisson, ''in overflow," 
John X, lo). The real reward, the Xxvlq, yithrdn, will not fail. 

5. With the Book of Esther, the fifth of the Megilloth 
or little classics, is associated the Feast of Purim, or Lots, 

not so much a religious observance as an annual 
manceofthe merrymaking (cf. Esth. ix, 19, 22), instituted es- 
Lotthat pecially by and for the Jews of the dispersion 

(cf. iv, 3) in commemoration of the deliverance 
narrated in the book. To call the book a romance is not 
to imply that it is unhistorical. A critical episode of the 
Persian period may well have underlain the story and its 
memorial ; though in some ways the situation, of which this 
is the only record, is hard to reconcile with what is known 

1 Cf. my ''Words of Koheleth," p. 212. 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

of Persian history ; some incidents, too, are hard to fit with 
the ways of an Oriental court. It was, however, as essen- 
tially a romance, a story masterfully told and colored, that 
the Book of Esther had access and power among the Jew- 
ish people. As such it is a notable and characteristic 
product of the later Hebrew literature. 

Note. We have already, in connection with the Book of Daniel, 
touched upon the vogue of the historical tale and of historical fiction in 
general ; see above, pp. 280, 281. It seems to have belonged to the like 
species as the midrash (cf. above, pp. 407 note, 419); was perhaps a 
more flexible and less didactic development of it. 

One of the first noteworthy things that the attentive 
reader of Esther feels is its atmosphere, '* that emotional 
^^ ,^ and social fluid which holds the separate social 

Its Atmos- . . , , . 

phere and atoms in Solution," and which in this case is 
Animus peculiar. The feeling rises as soon as he has 
passed the introductory stage (i, ii), which has prepared for 
the action, and read of the promotion of " Haman the son 
of Hammadatha the Agagite " to the post of prime minister 
of the realm (iii, i). From this point onward, by means of 
a double narrative plot — two stories merged eventually into 
one — our story resolves itself into the account of a bitter 
feud between Haman and Mordecai, breaking into scheme 
and counter scheme as soon as Haman discovered that Mor- 
decai was a Jew (iii, 4). The word ''Agagite " ( = Amalekite) 
explains the case. The two men were representative of two 
races, Amalek and Israel, which from remote times had 
been deadly foes. It was Amalek who as the first opponent 
fought Israel in Rephidim (Exod. xvii, 8-16), against whom 
Moses made a special decree of extermination (Deut. xxv, 
17-19), and whose king Agag, Haman's lineal ancestor, 
was hewn in pieces by Samuel (i Sam. xv, 32, 33). A racial 
antipathy, like a malign instinct, had always existed between 
the two nations, and Haman seized the opportunity of power 
on his part to glut it. The feeling of this on the part of 

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TREASURY OF THE CHOICE HEBREW CLASSICS 

the Hebrews is what gives rise to the unusual atmosphere 
that pervades our story,^ making it in some ways so unbibH- 
cal, — an atmosphere not teHgious nor tolerant, hardly even 
moral, but purely racial. The Book of Esther is a story of 
racial crisis and fortune, narrated in the spirit not of psalm- 
ist and prophet but of sheer race reaction, as if the long 
dispersion had caused a reversion to this. One feels here 
also the pride, the solidarity, the exclusiveness of this unique 
Jewish race ; and these qualities, though admirable, engender 
an unlovely animus and attitude which even the splendid 
heroism and self-abnegation of Esther rather accentuates 
than softens. In fine, the Book of Esther, for all its noble 
features, has to be read with a certain spiritual reservation 
and allowance. 

The consideration of atmosphere, however, gets us only 
a little way toward the heart of the book ; it was not this 
Its Rationale ^^^^ most deeply caused the rejoicing of the 
of Tone and Feast of Purim, the memorial of the lot that 
^^^ failed. It was evidently in this lot and its sequel 

that the Jews found their hope and cheer. Haman, ponder- 
ing his plot of exterminating the Jews, had the lot cast 
before him twelve times, month by month, before he dared 
undertake a thing so atrocious (iii, 7 ; ix, 24-26). It was 
the appeal of heathen superstition to the occult powers of 
Fortune and Destiny (cf. Isa. Ixv, 11); and one may imagine 
that the twelve lucky casts, one so uniformly after the other, 
had on his gambling mind a good deal the effect of miracle 
— or perhaps of having got the combination that would 
break the bank. It was as if his superstitious appeal to 
chance had somehow got behind chance to some mystic 
decree. He had obtained the warrant for a spiteful and 
inhuman act. So he bore his weight upon his lot, and 
appointed the date of execution (iii, 13). 

-1 A pervading atmosphere has already been noted in connection with 
the dominance of legalism; see above, p. 387. 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

Here then comes in the story of the lot that failed and 
its effect on the Jewish mind. Events came out the other 
way, and so marvelously that to, the Jews in their turn the 
reversal must have been equivalent to miracle. It was just 
the kind of happening that thinking people are wont, when 
they can look back upon it, to ascribe to divine purpose and 
agency. Nor was such ascription foreign to their habits of 
thought. Many events of less moment throughout Jewish 
history had been deemed miraculous ; the lot had often been 
appealed to and trusted in ; a distinctive trait of the national 
mind was implicit belief in and looking for the immediate 
interposition of God in human affairs. '' Jews ask for signs " 
(i Cor. i, 22) was St. Paul's characterization of his people. 
In this deliverance, however, was something that gambling 
could not determine. It was beyond the sphere of luck or 
unmotived chance, — a new proof, even for a scattered and 
subject people, that '' no weapon that is forrried against thee 
shall prosper" (cf. Isa. liv, 17). As such the wonderful 
reversal of outcome was as impressive, it meant as much, 
as miracle. 

But how shall this be told, — with what presupposition, 
what coloring ? We meet here a question not merely of the 
Jews' religious faith but of fitting literary tone and form. 
To relate the story in terms of the Hebrew recognition of 
miracle would be virtually to match one occult mystery with 
another, as if a plot supported by capricious omens were to 
be met and foiled by an equally capricious de?is ex machina. 
Such was not the way of the school in which the Jews had 
been reared. They had learned — it was in their blood and 
race — to identify Jehovah's work not by gambling but by 
the insight of reason and motive. He had always brought 
His dealings with men and their reasons out into the open, 
where they could be so mingled with fact and with the straight 
human mind that His presence therein could be taken for 
granted. This, I think, explains the purely secular idiom of 

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TREASURY OF THE CHOICE HEBREW CLASSICS' 

the Book of Esther, which is thought by some to lower its 
tone among Scripture writings. It is in fact the idiom of 
truest answer to the superstition of lot and luck. Accord- 
ingly, the writer has chosen to narrate his story in terms of 
plain event and circumstance, ignoring, perhaps purposely 
avoiding, religious or occult values, thereby making the fail- 
ure of the lot stand out more palpable. The moving details 
of romance too, the remarkable circumstantiality with which 
he has interwoven cause and consequence, hap and coincidence, 
— quite as in modern story-craft, — are rather a virtue than 
a redundance ; they show not only on what apparent acci- 
dents events may turn but how truly these belong with the 
rest in an interdependent chain. It is a reduction from the 
fortuitous to the normal. 

The Book of Esther, with its story of the beautiful queen 
who by her heroism made common cause with her imperiled 
Its Right to people and by her cleverness saved them, became 
Bible Grade extremely popular in Jewish social life ; its stim- 
ulus to Purim shows that. Among the five Megilloth, indeed, 
it came in time to be reckoned as the Roll par excellence. 
Among the more scrupulous and devout, however, there was 
much debate, and long, concerning its right to place and rank 
in a sacred canon. What we have noted of its tone and 
form will explain why. Its tone was not at all sacred. Its 
Purim memorial — a social merrymaking — did not pro- 
mote piety, was not Mosaic. The fact was noted also and 
grieved over that in all the book the name of the Deity did 
not once occur, nor any sign of worship. Plainly its whole 
tissue was of the world, not of the Bible. 

A sentence from the heart of the crisis, however, puts 
a different coloring upon the matter. When Mordecai is 
imploring Esther to take up her race's cause, his plea is, 
'' For if thou altogether boldest thy peace at this time, then 
will relief and deliverance arise to the Jews from another 
place, but thou and thy father's house will perish : and who 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

knoweth whether thou art not come to the kingdom for such 
a time as this?" (iv, 14). What ''other place" could he 
have meant ? Here, as it would seem, was a real though 
reticent recognition — the Jews became reticent in their dis- 
persion — of that ''high and holy place" (cf. Isa. Ivii, 15) 
toward which the Hebrew heart and hope always turned, 
that unseen realm where dwelt the Power and Purpose of 
eternity. In other words, it was an expression of trust in 
what we with like reticence and indirectness call Providence ; 
and it is followed by a heroic committal to it as a forestalling 
agency. This strikes the true Scripture note. Esther's 
resolve, "and so will I go in unto the king, which is not 
according- to the law ; and if I perish, I perish" (iv, 15), 
is a faith, not a gamble, a venture made sacred by fasting, 
not by superstition ; and it prevails. And this it does not 
by occult means but by the steady and traceable ongoings 
of event and circumstance. , The whole book, in this light, 
resolves itself into an account of the victory of Providence 
over luck, — the faith that succeeded over the lot that failed. 
To this end its interwoven wealth of detail, in the profane 
world's intelligible dialect, is not its blemish but its supreme 
fitness. For it shows how all the elements of life, designed 
and casual, effect and coincidence, coming as it were out of 
the natural order of things, shaped themselves into relief 
and deliverance. To have set this forth, though no divine 
name or trait be applied to it, is to have earned a merited 
rank in Scripture standards and values. To deny this is to 
put one's personal judgment above that of the Bible. 

IV. On the Literary Frontier 

With the last of the five Megilloth the " Treasury of the 
Choice Hebrew Classics," as such, may be deemed virtually 
complete. Several books are still comprised in this third 
division of the canon, one of them at least of great literary 

[51°] ■ 



TREASURY OF THE CHOICE HEBREW CLASSICS 

import. These seem, however, to have been added as later- 
coming works belonging essentially to another class. They 
have already been considered at length with reference to their 
subject matter ; it remains to glance at them again with 
reference to their reception and significance when written. 
They may be viewed as standing on the literary frontier of 
the Ol5 Testament, rounding out the canon of sacred writings 
which ''the people of a book" had for generations been 
compiling from their ancient literary heritage. 



The Visioned and the Settled. Contemplating these added 
books in their supplemental character as closing tjie canon, 
one may regard them as dealing respectively with the Jew- 
ish hope and the Jewish record. It is as if the collectors 
were minded to place here at the end, in a kind of resume, 
the permanent Jewish idea, as related to future and past ; 
an idea in which ''the habitual expectancy of the Jewish 
people ' ' and the historical grounds on which that expect- 
ancy was based should not fail of adequate expression. This 
is indicated in the one direction by the Book of Daniel, in 
which the undying hope of Judaism is set forth in vision, 
and in the other by what we have called the later cultus 
literature, the books of Ezra-Nehemiah (originally regarded 
as one book) and the Chronicles, a history readjusted to the 
reorganized Jewish state. 

To the study that we have already devoted to these let 
us note in addition what values come from the fact that 
they function so late in the Hebrew canon. 

The date at which by the most probable indications the 
Book of Daniel^ seems to have been written, namely, about 
1 68 B.C., falls in the midst of the gravest crisis that the 
Jewish cause ever underwent. The story of this, and of the 

1 For the study of Daniel in the historical light, as " Mage and Revealer 
at Court," see above, pp. 278-300. 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

victorious weathering of it under Judas Maccabaeus and his 
brothers, is told in the apocryphal books of the Maccabees. 
Daniel's It was the crisis that under the fanatical king 
Apocalyptic Antiochus IV, Epiphanes, befell not the Jewish 
and Reckon- State only but the Jewish religion and cultus. 
i°g® Its significance was more than political or reli- 

gious. It was in fact the first sharp onset of a conflict bound 
to come and continue between what modern thought calls 
Hebraism and Hellenism, the Jewish mind and the Greek 
mind facing the demands of the inner life. As such its 
outcome could be portrayed only apocalyptically. 

Note. It is not in our scope, as it is not in the scope of the canon, 
to dwell orf the details of this Maccabaean crisis. It was in brief the 
attempt to impose a foreign culture on a nation that by the laxity and 
venality of its leading classes and their heedless apes seemed superficially 
ripe for it. A table of its events, from the accession of Antiochus in 
176 B. c. to his death in 165, with Scriptural and historical references, 
is given in Driver, " Introduction to the Literature of the Old Testa- 
ment," p. 491 (Revised ed.). The darkest period, to which Daniel's 
allusions seem most closely related, may here be described in the 
words of Professor Cornill.^ 

' ' " And now (namely, after " the whole city was plundered, its walls 
razed, and a Syrian garrison put into the city ") Antiochus considered 
the occasion ripe for a master stroke. On the 27th of October, 168 b. c, 
he issued the insane decree which was intended to exterminate Judaism 
root and branch. All the sacred writings of the Jews were to be delivered 
up and destroyed, the exercise of the Jewish religion was forbidden on 
pain of death, all the Jews were to sacrifice- to the Greek gods, and the 
temple at Jerusalem was to become a sanctuary of Olympian Zeus. The 
abomination of desolation ^ was actually established in the sacred place, 
and on the 25th of December, 1 68 b. c, the first sacrifice was offered 
there to Zeus — whether by the high priest Menelaus we do not know. 
The commands of the king were executed with unexampled severity, and 
the subordinate functionaries of authority evidently took fiendish delight 
in harassing and tormenting in every imaginable way the Jews who were 
loyal to the law." 

1 Cornill, " History of the People of Israel," pp. 191, 192. 
^ Cf. Dan. ix, 27 ; xi, 31 ; xii, 11 ; Matt, xxiv, 15. 

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TREASURY OF THE CHOICE HEBREW CLASSICS 

In our previous study of Daniel ^ we have noted how his 
four visions, beginning with the dream-vision of chapter vii, 
becoming increasingly specific and literal as they 
Book Fits succeed one another, and accompanied with vari- 
the Time ^^^ reckonings of times, all concentrate themselves 
on a time marked by the ruthless reign of " a king of fierce 
countenance and understanding dark sentences " (cf. viii, 23), 
and by ''the transgression" (viii, 13) or "abomination that 
maketh desolate" (xi, 31). This is in fact the nodal point 
of the Book of Daniel. How enheartening the designation 
of it in such transcendent terms must have been to the 
sorely tried faithful among the Jews needs no affirmation. 
To know that this very crisis, predicted and calculated by a 
renowned mage of the old time, would also pass, as it were 
a mere episode in their larger destiny, was equivalent to a 
spiritual revival and deliverance. The pious conditions of 
the story, too, had their effect. In the Maccabean history, 
written some sixty-five years later, the priest Mattathias, who 
had started the Maccabaean revolt, is represented as saying 
in his death-bed address to his sons, '' Hananiah, Azariah, 
Mishael, believed, and were saved out of the flame ; Daniel 
for his innocency was delivered from the mouth of lions " 
(i Mace, ii, 59, 60). No book of Scripture ever had a more 
immediate appeal to its time. 

But Daniel is emphatically a book not for a time but for 
all time — for eternity. From the beginning of its visions 
The Larger ^^^ presages it overflows its Maccabaean episode, 
Objective — treating this, indeed, only as an obstacle to 
be overcome in the majestic march of disclosure toward 
a larger objective. Its revelations, first broached through 
Nebuchadnezzar's forgotten dream (chap, ii), are given in 
terms of kingdoms and their types, culminating in the vision 
of one "like unto a son of man," who, standing before 
the Ancient of Days, receives an everlasting dominion which 

1 See " The Enigma of the Later Revelations," pp. 297-300, above. 
• [513] 



GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

shall not pass away (see vii, 9-14, 27). Such is the final 
victory, when the judgment is set (vii, 26), and the king 
who has spoken " words against the Most High " loses his 
malign power. '' Here," says the author, '' is the end of the 
matter " (vii, 28), — as if all else were subsidiary. The more 
specific disclosure, indeed, of '' what shall be in the latter 
time of the indignation" (cf. viii, 19), ''belongeth to the 
appointed time of the end," and can be reckoned in times; 
but this is final and supreme. 

We call this kind of theme apocalyptic,^ and many stu- 
dents take its novelty as if the author of Daniel had intro- 
duced it. It is not new. The author has merely put into 
vivid description and imagery subjects that from the begin- 
ning of literary prophecy have risen like the promise of dawn 
from beyond their horizon. It is the kind of theme that 
deals with such matters as the judgment of the world, the 
coming kingdom of heaven, the life hereafter, the times of 
the end, — matters which, ignoring the intermediate chain 
of cause and circumstance, or political vicissitude, reveal a 
foreshortened event, opening thereto a boundless field of 
intuition and realistic imagination. The prophets before 
Daniel, busy with environing conditions, could not let them- 
selves go in apocalyptic ; but many apocalyptic elements, 
more or less succinct or fleeting, occur in their writings. It 
remained for the author of Daniel, speaking as if from the 
time of its early outlook, to give it the charm of vision and 
symbol and story and concentrate it upon its personal con- 
summator, at the same time publishing it at the point in 
Jewish history where it would do the most immediate good. 
For what is more than this his prophecy too, as soon as he 
has predicted the end of Antiochus (xi, 45), is foreshortened, 
and goes out in a variegated picture of resurrection (xii, 2), 
of the glory of good teaching (3), of increased knowledge 
(4), and of a mingled goodness and wickedness (10) not 

1 For a definition of "apocalyptic," see above, p. 147, note 2. 

[514] • 



TREASURY OF THE CHOICE HEBREW CLASSICS 

unlike the condition depicted in Isa. xxxii, i-8. To Daniel 
himself ''the words are shut up and sealed till the time of 
the end " (vss. 4, 9), and he puts no period to the " thousand 
three hundred and five and thirty days " (vs. 12) ; but when 
the seal is broken "they that are wise shall understand" 
(vs. 10), and over it all shines afar the surviving and vic- 
torious kingdom which it is the central purpose of the book 
to reveal, — the kingdom that '' shall be given to the people 
of the saints of the Most High " (vii, 27). 

Note. Professor R. H. Charles, in the Encyclopasdia Britannica, 
gives the following list of passages in the canonical Old Testament 
apocalyptic: Isa. xxiv-xxvii ; xxxiii ; xxxiv-xxxv (Jer. xxxiii, 14-26.''); 
Ezek. ii, 8; xxxvii-xxxix ; Joel iii, 9-17; Zech. xii-xiv ; Daniel. To 
these he ought certainly to have added much of the Second Isaiah, and 
especially its culminating prophecy of new heavens and a new earth, 
chapters Ixv, Ixvi. 

We have seen how remarkably the Book of Daniel fitted 
itself to the desperate crisis of its Maccabean age. Not less 
-^ ^ .^ remarkable is the way in which it met and con- 

The Literary -^ 

Vehicle and trolled its age's literary tendencies and tastes. Its 
stimulus story form of invention was already a favorite 
vogue ; we have seen this in Esther and Ruth and Jonah.^ 
In its age also the custom was rising, and soon to become 
very prevalent, of writing books in the name or personality 
of great ones of history ; we have seen this in Ecclesiastes 
and his personation of Solomon, and many uncanonical 
works of the succeeding time carry it on. Most notable of 
all, however, is the stimulating effect of its apocalyptic theme, 
— fresh and awakening as this proved to be. It is not too 
much to say the Book of Daniel set the imagination of. de- 
vout Judaism aflame. For the moral austerity of the classi- 
cal prophets it substitutes the words and imagery of an 
old-time mage (Daniel never poses as a prophet), speaking 
in the visioned lore of Chaldean speculation. Thus it opened 

1 Cf. what is said of Daniel, pp. 280, 281, above. 

[515] 



GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

a new and fascinating field already to a degree warranted 
in Scripture but never before exploited. From this time 
onward, until about a. d. ioo, apocalyptic speculation was 
very popular, its most prominent work, the Book of Enoch, 
appearing less than a century after Daniel. It was largely 
from the ideas exploited in these extra-canonical books — 
ideas of last judgment, the. kingdom of heaven, the Son of 
man, resurrection, heaven and hell, the end of the age — 
that the terms and conceptions were derived to which our 
Lord adjusted his teaching and ministry. He found in these, 
as in the older Scriptures, much both to adopt and to cor- 
rect.^ Only the Book of Daniel, however, in this apocalyptic 
strain, attained to an assured place in th^ Hebrew canon. 

As the Book of Daniel by its bold use of mystic vision 
revived and exalted the Jewish hope, so more than a cen- 
tury before (cir. 300 b.c.) the Chronicler, by his 
Chronicler's resume of the nation's history in the clerical 
Resume of mood, had brought the record of the Judean 
dynasty and the Temple cultus continuously 
onward to the reorganization on priestly and Pentateuchal 
principles under Ezra and Nehemiah ; at which point, as 
the record ends here, we have before us for Biblical values 
a stationary and static Judaism, in which ''Jerusalem had 
ceased to be the head of an independent state and had 
become merely a municipality governed by a church." ^ 
We have already reviewed this work of the Chronicler, in 
the section on ''The Later Cultus Literature."^ I call him 
"The Chronicler," in the singular number, because the 
three works (or rather two) of which the series is made up 
seerh to have come originally from the pen of one author 
or editor^ and to have been composed with reference to 
each other. These two, Ezra-Nehemiah and Chronicles, 
are the latest history given in the Hebrew canon. 

1 See below, p. 528. ^ See above, pp. 403-414. 

2 Cf. above, p. 408. * Cf. above, pp. 404, 405. 

[516] 



TREASURY OF THE CHOICE HEBREW CLASSICS 

In the arrangement of this division of the canon, Ezra- 
Nehemiah, though its story reaches to a later date, is put 
before Chronicles. Its object is to carry the history on from 
Cyrus's edict of return to the establishment of law and cultus 
under Ezra and Nehemiah, as marked by the reception of 
the Pentateuch and the Levitical organization of the priestly 
service. From this point the Jewish history, its Biblical values 
all in, may be taken for granted. 

As placed after Ezra-Nehemiah, and thus at the very end 
of the whole canon, the Book of Chronicles (i and 2 Chron- 
inthe ^^^^^ originally a single book) reads like a kind 

Nature of of appendix or supplement, to the whole course 
ppen IX ^£ Scripture annals, designed to make it homo- 
geneous with the matured Judaism of the end. . Its title im- 
plies this, and as translated into Greek asserts it. It begins 
with Adam (i Chron. i, i) ; but except for names and gene- 
alogies in which the priestly line has a generous share, it 
has no occasion to enlarge upon events until the Davidic 
house and the southern kingdom enter, after which the 
detailed resume, though traversing the ground already cov- 
ered by Samuel and Kings, is shaped and colored to the 
Judaic and Levitical model until the surviving common- 
wealth, with the Pentateuch as constitution and the Temple 
as capitol, has passed from monarchy to high-priesthood. 
''The law was given through Moses" (John i, 17), and the 
completed organization under that law is portrayed at the 
literary frontier of the Hebrew Bible. By this the older 
dispensation is ready to be estimated through the ages. 

II 

The Pause between the Testaments. To the Jews, thus 
fortified in their ancient covenant, this doubtless meant a 
finality ; though their most liberal and far-seeing prophets 
had not read their destiny so (cf., for instance, Jer. xxxi, 
31-34 ; Isa. xlix, 5-7), nor would the opening of apocalyptic 

[517] 



GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

vision and reckoning have it so. Not a finality closed to 
further additions, it was rather a pause until time and con- 
ditions should be ripe for enlargement and fulfillment in 
more universal relations. Meanwhile let us note what shape 
the Old Testament canon assumes, with what modifications, 
as thus it rounds out its third division and pauses at its 
literary frontier. 

In its later years the Hebrew culture had two centers of 

activity and influence, one at Jerusalem, where were its 

scribes and rabbis and religious zealots, the other 

The 

Provincial ^^ Alexandria, which we may call the capital of 
Facing the the Dispersion, where were its scholars and 
thinkers, and where numerous communities of 
outland Jews must subsist under foreign conditions.' Among 
these latter circles not only must the Hebrew literature 
maintain its rivalry with the most cultivated literature of 
the world,^ it must be put into the language medium which 
its own devotees could use. That language medium, now 
becoming universal for world intercourse, was the Greek. 
Accordingly, almost coetaneously with the final shaping of 
the Hebrew book came the earliest version of it, the Sep- 
tuagint translation, done by Alexandrian scholars. The event 
was momentous. One may call it the first stroke against 
Hebrew exclusiveness, the first step beyond the pause. It 
was like the provincial called to face the universal ; an out- 
lying parochial literature to exhibit itself before more finely 
developed tastes and standards of culture. It could not well 
escape some tendency to pliability and modification. Rigidly 
Jewish as it remained in substance, it must in form become 
readable also to the Greek literary sense. 

We have called the Jewish people, educated by the tread- 
ing in of their venerable literature, the people of a book. 
This Old Testament in its three coordinate divisions of 
Law, Prophets, and Writings, is their book, as it were a 

1 Cf. above, p. 431. 

[518] 



TREASURY OF THE CHOICE HEBREW CLASSICS 

library molded to the unity of a dominant idea. These divi- 
sions followed one another in successive periods of time as 
Effects of their values came to clearness and standard, the 
the Greek last not being finally settled until near a.d. ioo. 
It is not in our scope here to trace modifying 
elements through the Septuagint and its dependent versions 
except in one particular, an important one indeed ; namely, 
the arrangement. The change is especially noticeable in the 
third division. It consists in putting seven books of that 
division, by a juster literary valuation, where they intrin- 
sically belong. We have already noted (see p. 431) the 
transfers that were made. The result was to put narrative 
works (Ruth, Esther, Ezra, Nehemiah, Chronicles) where 
they could be read with other works of their class in conse- 
cution and context, and to put works of prophetic strain 
(Lamentations, Daniel) where their subject matter is vital. 
This leaves of the third division only the five poetical books 
(Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs), the 
mere withdrawal of the others sufficing to give them a class 
by themselves. How this facilitates reading the Scripture 
as a classified series of coordinated works is obvious enough. 
It makes the successive stages more homogeneous in literary 
theme and tone. But this is not all. The Hebrew divisions 
themselves are quite disregarded in favor of a more con- 
secutive sense of the underlying idea. With the prophets 
put not second but last, and with the poetry central in the 
volume, one who now reads the Old Testament in course has 
before him, first, the storied and creative past, to whose an- 
nals the law however given or obeyed is merely an adjunct ; 
second and central, the present living values of poetry in 
lyric and lesson ; and finally in the body of the most unique 
and penetrative contribution of the Hebrew mind to the world's 
thought, the prophetic sense and power of the eternal future. 
Here is the true place to pause, as it were in position for the 
next movement. From this frontier the look is forward. 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

Note. The apocalyptic visions of Daniel, at whatever time published, 
are ostensibly reckoned from the time of the captivity, and being by so 
much remote from the pausing point between the Testaments are cor- 
respondingly vague and mystical. Much less vague and undefined, 
though equally apocalyptic, are the prophecies noted under " The 
Subsidence of Prophecy," pages 352-359, namely, Zech. ix-xiv and 
Malachi. So much the more fitting is it, therefore, that the Greek 
variation has so rearranged the Old Testament canon that these, as 
completing the prophetic section, come last. (Cf. remarks on " The 
Messenger and his Function," pp. 367-369.) 

And when the new order is at the fullness of the time, it 
begins where, as we now view it, the old leaves off. John 
the Baptist, its herald, speaks in the spirit of Elijah, its 
typical prophet, and is identified by the prediction of Malachi, 
its latest prophet. He regards himself as merely the Voice 
heard by the Second Isaiah, proclaiming the way of 
Jehovah (John i, 23 ; cf. Isa. xl, 3). Thus he breaks the 
pause by instituting a new surge of thought and power, 
pushing on toward completion the unfinality of the old 
movement. So by the time when, about the end of the 
first Christian century, the careful Jewish rabbis have fully 
determined the content and purity of their canon, enough 
literature of the new order is in hand to make up another 
which, just as carefully selected, is to the first as reality to 
vision, as fulfillment to promise. 



[520] 



BOOK III 

THE PEOPLE OF THE WAY 



Ye search the Scriptures, because ye think that in the'm ye have eternal 
life ; and these are they which bear witness of me. ... I am the way. — 
Jesus 

But this I confess unto thee, that after the Way which they call a sect, 
so serve I the God of our fathers, believing all things which are according 
to the law, and which are written in the prophets ; having hope toward God, 
which these also themselves look for. — Paul 



[522] 



THE PEOPLE OF THE WAY 

BECAUSE the Jewish people, during the period between 
the Exile and the coming of Jesus, set such extraordi- 
nary value on their literature, coordinating its classics to- 
gether into a single library or canon, we have called them 
the People of a Book. From that book or its component 
parts, which later ages called the Old Testament, they drew 
all that was authoritative for life and instruction. It was, 
as of the Jewish race it still is, their Bible ; and as such 
its body of literature was regarded as practically closed and 
complete. 

When Jesus came and made disciples he appealed to the 
same book. He was a thorough student of it ; and it was 
as valuable to him as it was to the Jewish people of his time 
(cf. Luke xxiv, 27, 44 ; John v, 39). But it was valuable 
in a different way. To the scribes, who were the accredited 
Biblical scholars of his day, it was virtually a repository 
of dead rules, precepts, doctrines, to which they appended 
numerous minute distinctions and applications, technically 
called midrash'^ (a word meaning ''investigation," ''inter- 
pretation "). These oral additions became so numerous and 
so exclusively valued that the spirit of the original was well- 
nigh gcme (cf. Mark vii, 9, 13). The Bible had suffered, 
in fact, the fate of becoming a classic, the fate of being 
treated as a stereotyped and finished product of the past. 
To Jesus, on the other hand, it was a book whose spirit and 
principles were living things ; to be apprehended therefore 
with the freedom of a pure heart and sound sense. It was 
a book not merely of scholarship and erudition, but of the 

1 Cf. above, p. 407, footnote. 
[523] 



GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

constant and permanent values of life. He handled it in 
such a way, as he taught, that its truth needed no labored 
explanation or analysis ; it was self-evident. 

Note. Jesus calls the scribes' additions to Scripture " tradition," 
paradosis toit presbuteron ; and as far as they obscured or traversed the 
true meaning of Scripture he regarded them as hurtful excrescences ; 
cf. Matt. XV, 6 ; xxiii, 23. 

After Jesus' death and resurrection, when little companies 
of his followers drew their faith and inspiration from the 
memory of his life, they did not at first think of themselves 
as other than loyal Jews ;.for whom, as for all other Jews, 
the Old Testament was the supreme literary and religious 
authority. Their new faith was to them the venerable Jew- 
ish faith and doctrine, with its meanings deepened and its 
prophecies fulfilled. It was some years, indeed, before they 
received the distinctive name of Christians (see Acts xi, 26). 
Their manner of belief was first called The Way (see Acts 
ix, 2) ; and they were first persecuted as a heretical sect of 
Jews. But the person who, to begin with, was most zealous 
to persecute them, Saul of Tarsus, who was himself origi- 
nally a Pharisee — that is, of the strictest Jewish sect (Acts 
xxvi, 5) — became convinced that this Christian way of life, 
though called a sect, was really in the direct line of enlarged 
and fulfilled Judaism (see Acts xxiv, 14, 15). It is perhaps 
to St. Paul, indeed, that we owe the name The Way, as 
applied to Christianity. We adopt the name therefore by 
Scripture warrant, and consider the literature of the Chris- 
tian way, that is, the New Testament, as the vital -comple- 
tion of the truth foreshadowed in the Old. 

It was many years after Jesus' ministry before a distinctive 
Christian literature had so accumulated as to form the ma- 
terial for a New Testament canon. Meanwhile the Christians 
were the people of a life rather than of a book. '' An epistle 
of Christ " (2 Cor. iii, 3) St. Paul, the great wTiter of epistles, 
calls them. It was the life that was in them, rather than 

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THE PEOPLE OF THE WAY 

the books they wrote, that made them a power in the world ; 
it was their distinctive Way of Hfe, learned at first hand by 
familiar intercourse with a wise and gracious Master, that, 
as time and experience wrought their seasoning influence, 
created their literature, the literature of the New Testament. 
Accordingly, it is with that personal source and type that 
we have first to deal ; with the words and acts of Jesus, 
which in themselves were not only a wisdom , of life but 
a skilled and finished literary power. To take note of this 
is the object proposed in the chapter on The Son of Man. 
How all this with its apostolic consequences got itself into 
biographical and historical record is considered in the chap- 
ter on The Literature of Fact. The chapter on The Lit- 
erature of Values, following thereon, traces how the large 
meanings of the Christian Way were deduced from the 
ministry of Jesus and from the older literature of which 
Christianity is the heir. And finally, in the chapter on 
The Resurgence of Prophecy, is considered how the Chris- 
tian Way from being a fulfillment projects itself in turn 
onward toward the limitless future, toward Isaiah's promise 
of ''new heavens and a new earth" (cf. Isa. Ixv, 17; 
Rev. xxi, I, 2). 



[535] 



CHAPTER IX 

THE SON OF MAN 

[4 B.C. to A.D. 30] 

WHATEVER estimate our religious affiliations have 
led us to form of the personality of Jesus, the fact 
with which our present study is concerned is that the whole 
New Testament literature centers in him. He is its inspira- 
tion, its vitality, its formative influence. Its interpretation 
of the older literature, its new light on the way of life, its 
clear conception of eternal values, all derive from the life, 
the words, the ministry of Jesus. 

The New Testament writers are indeed thoroughly 
grounded, as was their Master, in Old Testament ideas. Its 
laws, its prophecies, its wisdom, its poetry, are constantly 
referred to and quoted by them, as things familiarly known. 
Thus in a very intimate way the New Testament is inter- 
woven with the Old ; nor does it profess in any -sense to 
supersede the Old. Rather, it supplements and completes 
it. The older ideas, true as they are, it regards as essen- 
tially unfinal, incomplete, preparatory to something fuller 
and clearer (cf. Col. ii, 16, 17 ; Heb. x, i) ; and the realiza- 
tion, the fulfillment, is embodied in personal form in Jesus. 
He actually is what the ancient prophets dreamed ought to 
be, and more. As one of his New Testament biographers 
puts it (John i, 4) : "In him was life, and the life was the 
light of men." 

Note. By that same biographer, in the profoundest of the gospels, 
Jesus is introduced by a conception essentially literary : he is called the 
Word {logos) made flesh and dwelling among us (John i, 14); as if the 

[526] 



THE SON OF MAN 

idea of God, inexpressible otherwise, were concentrated in a single word, 
and that word were spelled not in letters but in human life. Tennyson 
has embodied the idea in a stanza : 

And so the Word had breath, and wrought 
With human hands the creed of creeds 
In loveliness of perfect deeds, 

More strong than all poetic thought ; 

Which he may read that binds the sheaf, 
Or builds the house, or digs the grave, 
And those wild eyes that watch the wave 

In roarings round the coral reef.^ 

This is literary expression conceived in its ideal simplicity and its perfect 
power of intelligibility, — answering to the supreme purpose of revelation. 

Our study of the New Testament period of the Biblical 
literature, therefore, naturally begins with the personal source 
from which its power and truth are derived ; and to this end 
we designate him by the title which he himself chose and 
which none will deny him, The Son of Man. 

I. Expectation and Answer 

As the result of the literary ideals in which the Jewish 
race had been educated, there was at the time of Jesus' 
coming a widespread expectation, shared in by all classes, 
of a coming new order of things. In a general way that 
expectation had been derived from the older prophets, whose 
activity had subsided after the return from captivity and the 
rebuilding of the Temple, four centuries before. But since 
the time of the Maccabees, when the Book of Daniel was 
written (about i68 B.C.), a new species of literature, the 
apocalyptic, had become popular. In this literature the idea 
of the new order was conceived in terms at once more defi- 
nite and more idealized. •Thus the expectation was supported 
by a kind of fusion of two ideas : the prophetic, giving it 
moral substance, and the apocalyptic, giving it vividness. 
The new order was to be a kingdom of heaven. Its king, 

1 Tennyson, " In Memoriam," xxxvi. 
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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

who was to be of the stock of David, was designated some- 
what vaguely as the Messiah, or, in its Greek equivalent, the 
Christ, meaning ''the Anointed One." A more common 
designation, and still more vague but well understood, was 
''He that cometh," or ''The Coming One" (cf. Matt, iii, 
II ; xi, 3). The result of his coming, as was supposed, 
would be a peremptory overturn of the existing government 
and the restoration of sovereignty to Israel. This hope had 
long been gathering head, and by the time Jesus came its 
fulfillment was generally felt to be near. 

It is important to note how the prevailing idea of the new 

. order shaped itself in men's imaginations. For if Jesus set 

himself definitely to inaugurate it he must both 

The Ideas y o 

that the conform his teaching to current conceptions and 
Coming One correct these where they were wrong or excessive 

must Meet . . 

or one-sided. What was this kingdom of heaven 
to be like ? What would be the character of its king, the 
Messiah } What would be the conditions of his reign ? 
Such were the questions already in the air that must be 
met and answered. All sorts, of imaginings, vague or vivid, 
pious or crafty, were enlisted in the inquiry ; and whatever 
its form the expectation was intense, eager, ready to break 
out in revolt or fanaticism. Evidently the situation was one 
to be dealt with wisely, patiently, constructively. Men's ideas 
must not only be answered and appeased ; they must first 
of all be educated. 

The idea of the coming order most popularly prevalent 
was the apocalyptic. In accordance with this the new regime 
Among the was figured as one of conquest and absolute 
Literaiists dominion, in which as subjects of the Messiah 
the Jewish race was not only to be Selivered from the power 
of Rome (that of course) but to have ascendancy over the 
whole world. That is, it was conceived in terms of earthly 
despotism, and its center of power was to be Jerusalem 
and Palestine. With this dream of worldly sovereignty was 

[5^81 



THE SON OF MAN 

mingled a supernatural element. The Messiah, who was 
imagined to correspond, was to be first of all an irresistible 
conqueror, who would come suddenly from heaven and over- 
turn the existing order ; and then he would reign in a divine 
power and splendor which nothing could withstand or rival. 
It was to be a kingdom inaugurated by miracle, and main- 
tained not by the inner worth and integrity of its subjects 
but by the limitless might and glory of its absolute Monarch. 
Such was the idea among the less thoughtful and more 
demonstrative. It would easily find the response of the 
floating masses, who were equally ready to be swayed by 
pretenders raising insurrections against Roman rule or by 
fanatics who would form a new religious sect. Already 
by the time of Jesus' coming several such movements had 
risen and been put down (cf. Acts v, 36, 37) — movements 
generally characterized by excess and violence, though having 
at heart the expected kingdom. There was a sect called the 
Zealots, apparently of revolutionary sentiments, from whom 
Jesus, in his large tolerance of human temperaments, chose 
one of his apostles (see Luke vi, 15 ; Acts i, 13). Men of 
all classes, it would seem, were to be educated for the 
new order. 

Note, Of this Messianic expectancy Dr. Sanday ('* Life of Christ in 
Recent Research," p. 81) says : " It may be . . . true that there were a 
good many Jews for whom the Messianic hope was more or less dormant. 
But I imagine that from the time of the Maccabees to the time of Bar- 
cochba there was a Messianic background — or something Hke it — to 
every popular movement that swept over Palestine. I cannot think that 
the Zealots, for instance, were either simple brigands or a purely political 
party without any admixture of religion. Just as the Book of Daniel 
reveals the spiritual atmosphere of the age to which it belongs, so also 
do the Psalms of Solomon reveal the like conditions a hundred years 
later, and the Assumption of Moses later still. . . . That the religious 
hopes as well as the political often took a very coarse and violent form, 
I regard as certain. Therefore it seems to me that if our Lord appealed 
to these hopes, He could not do so without to some extent correcting 
them." . ' 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

To the more contemplative and devout-minded, however, 

and especially the common people remote from public affairs, 

the coming new order shaped itself in terms less 

Among the ^ ^ 

Spiritually material and political, and more as a spiritual 
Mmded emancipation and blessedness. Such people, for 

instance, were Simeon and Anna (Luke ii, 25, 38), an aged 
devout man and a prophetess in the time of Jesus' infancy, 
who were '' looking for the consolation of Israel " and for 
''the redemption of Jerusalem." Such also was the coun- 
cillor Joseph of Arimathea (Luke xxiii, 51), who was "look- 
ing for the kingdom of God." Jt was from this class of 
people, too, that the parents of Jesus came, and the cousins 
and friends from whom he selected his disciples (cf. John i, 
35-42). It was on such a basis of character and hope as 
these represented that a sane and constructive conception of 
the kingdom and the Coming One could best be shaped. 



The Prophetic Herald. One element in the Jewish ex- 
pectation of the Messiah was that when he came he would 
be preceded by a herald or messenger, whose function it 
would be to prepare the way for him. This idea they drew, 
not from the popular apocalyptic literature but from the older 
prophets. " The voice of one that crieth. Prepare ye . . .the 
way of Jehovah " (Isa. xl, 3), for instance, was accepted as 
the prophecy of an event much later than the time of its 
utterance. There was also a prediction of a messenger to ' 
prepare Jehovah's way, given by the latest prophet Malachi, 
about four hundred years before (Mai. iii, i). To the literal- 
minded this prediction was made realistic by the same 
prophet's assertion (Mai. iv, 5) that the herald was to be the 
prophet Elijah ; who would supposedly come back from 
the unseen world for the purpose. Thus the imagination 
of the people had endowed the expected herald as well as 
the Messiah himself with mystic and super-earthly powers. 

[530] 



THE SON OF MAN 

Doubtless, too, there was a variety of ideas, from the 
most material to the most spiritual, as to how this herald 
would be identified when he came. Their literature, in fact, 
had given them a personal image ; and time and fancy had 
made this loom so large that any concrete object answering 
to it must almost necessarily be more or less estranging. 
In other words, both the herald and the Messiah, when they 
came, had to meet the inevitable sense of shrinkage that 
seems to ensue when an object of imagination becomes an 
object of actual sense-perception. 

John the Baptist, whose mission it was to be the fore- 
runner of Jesus, was a kinsman of his, six months his elder 
The Idea (Luke i, 36). He was of priestly stock, born of 
Made Real parents who were of the Puritan type of Jewish 
piety (Luke i, 5, 6). St. Luke relates that his mission, to go 
before the Messiah in the spirit and power of Elijah, was 
prophesied of him before his birth (Luke i, 17) ; and as a 
young man both his training and temperament led him to 
the same kind of ascetic and austere life as had been lived 
by Elijah the Tishbite more than eight centuries before (cf. 
I Kings xvii-xxii ; also 2 Kings i, 7, 8). Until his public 
ministry began he lived in the Judean wilderness, perhaps 
in one of the numerous caves of the region ; and his dress, 
diet, and habits emphasized the almost savage sternness of 
his attitude to life. It was as if by such symbolic means 
he would warn men to return from the artificial and degen- 
erate tendencies of civilization to primitive first principles. 

" John the Baptist," says Professor J. R. Seeley,^ ''was like 
the Emperor Nerva. In h is career it_was_^yen_iiim ,.tQ, jia 
two thin gs — to inaugurate a new regime, and also to nomi- 
natea successor who was far greater than himself." Of 
these two things he was aware from the beginning of his 
career, and ordered his ministry accordingly. Adopting a 
primitive custom, he embodied his requirement in a symbolic 

1 Seeley, " Ecce Homo,'" p. 10. 

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l^^ 



GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

act, namely, the baptism of those who heeded his word and 
repented of their evil life. As he administered the rite, 
however, he told his hearers that this baptism was only pre- 
liminary to something greater. Expressed in water, it meant 
merely the negative virtue of cleansing and change of pur- 
pose ; while the successor who was coming would impart the 
positive virtue, symbolized by the Holy Spirit and fire (Matt, 
iii, 1 1). Such was the acted metaphor by which he gave his 
message a spiritual significance. He also figured his suc- 
cessor, when at length he saw him, as an atoning lamb 
(John i, 29, 36) ; a symbol drawn from the priestly ideas 
familiar to all Jews, with perhaps a reminiscence of Isa. liii, 
7. On the principles involved in these symbols John met 
the prevailing expectation, proclaiming that the kingdom of 
heaven was at hand. When questioned who he was, how- 
ever, he denied all claim to being the Messiah, or Elijah, 
or any other ancient prophet (John i, 19-27). He was only 
the Voice, he said, to proclaim the Coming One, and a 
Mightier than he was to succeed him. John's personal char- 
acter, therefore, in its complete self-effacement, precluded all 
idea of inaugurating a new order by revolution or violence 
except the spiritual revolution involved in repentance. The 
preparation he advocated' was not of national insurgency 
nor of any concerted movement, but of the individual mind 
and heart. 

The substance and tone of John's preaching corresponded 
to the austerity of his life. It was the kind of message 
Substance natural to one who, living apart from men and 
and Tone of their affairs, lacked sympathy with them ; in this 
essage j-ggp^^^^- jjj^g ^Yi2.t of his prophetic predecessors 
Elijah and Amos. It was stern and minatory ; demanding 
repentance ; pronouncing censure and judgment ; sparing 
none on account of family or race or position. The coming 
kingdom he portrayed in terms of doom and punishment, 
and the Coming One as a bringer of vengeance and severity. 

[532] 



THE SON OF MAN 

The Christ, in his anticipation, was to be not the Friend 
and Brother of mankind, but the Chastiser and Judge ; and 
the regime corresponding was figured as an ax ready to hew 
down an unfruitful tree, and as a fan which would separate 
wheat from chaff that the latter might be burned. It was 
the sternness of the old Jewish dispensation concentrated 
into a threat of retribution and doom. For the ancient idea 
of the day of Jehovah men's newer imagination had sub- 
stituted the idea of the kingdom of heaven ; but like the 
prophets before him John attacked their too easy optimism 
by warning them that if they pictured it in colors of fancy 
rather than principle they were liable to find it a dies irce. 

Note. In the most striking Old Testament prophecies of a coming 
Personage, or of a regenerating people, there is a note of severity 
mingled with the beneficence; cf. Isa. xi, 1-5, and especially verse 4, 
which was in John's mind. See also Isa. xH, 15, where that severity is 
predicated of the people, and xlix, 2, where the Servant of Jehovah 
himself speaks. The Day of Jehovah, also, was divested of its idle opti- 
mism and pictured in terms of judgment and wrath ; see Amos v, 1 8 ; 
Joel i, 15; Zeph. i, 14, 15 ; Isa. xiii, 6, 9. 

John the Baptist, one of the noblest, is also one of the 
most pathetic figures of history. He is a solitary represent- 
At the End ative of the primitive prophetic ideal ; standing 
of an Era between the old era and the new, just w^here his 
prophecy ihust maintain its eternal validity, and yet where 
the fulfillment, coming immediately after, makes the proph- 
ecy itself obsolete. This is expressed in the tribute that 
Jesus paid to him : "Among them that are born of women 
there hath not risen a greater than John the Baptist ; yet 
he that is but little in the kingdom of heaven is greater 
than he" (Matt, xi, 11). 

From the literary point of view John's announcement of 
the Christ kingdom is an instance of the foreshortening of 
prophetic vision, such as we have already noted in the earlier 
prophets. He sees the kingdom as it is destined ultimately 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

to be, sternly triumphant over evil. He sees the final vic- 
tory of right and truth. But he has the idea that this must 
come by revolution, by a sudden catastrophe ; and this fills 
all his field of vision. The long, slow means by which the 
new order must be brought about, the growing spirit of good- 
will and fellowship by which alone such a kingdom can pre- 
vail, he has not yet discovered. His imagination has fed 
itself on the sternness of the old regime, and his sense of 
the power of love and good-will is undeveloped. Nor can he 
realize this until he sees it actually embodied in the life and 
work of his successor, and then, indeed, only dimly. So even 
after he has proclaimed and identified Jesus as the Christ 
he falls into doubt whether after all he was right, and from 
the prison to which his faithful preaching has brought him 
sends to Jesus asking, ''Art thou he that cometh, or look 
we for another.?" (Matt, xi, 3). Jesus' answer to the ques- 
tion is merely to enumerate the various kinds of good work 
he is doing, as if bidding John judge for himself whether 
these fulfill Messianic conditions. 

II 

The Old Order Changes. The coming of Jesus, as his- 
tory proves, was the coming of a radically new order and 
emphasis of things, wherein all that was good in the old 
remained as valid and integral as ever. In that? transition 
the old order insensibly passed away, or rather became 
absorbed in the new. In other words, the coming of the 
Messiah, with all that it meant, though it eventually caused 
a revolution in men's minds, was at first an event as natural 
and unnoticed as an event of ordinary life. Of the Servant 
of Jehovah, who was held to be a prophetic type of the 
Messiah, the Second Isaiah had said, '' He hath no form 
nor comeliness ; and when we see him, there is no beauty 
that we should desire him " (Isa. liii, 2). The case of Jesus' 
coming was analogous. It was not by display or external 

[534] 



THE SON OF MAN 

claims that men were to recognize and accept him, but by 
the intrinsic worth and power that were in hihi, as seen by 
honest and pure-minded men. 

At the beginning of this changed order, the Coming One 
whom John announced and the Jewish people expected must 
The Christ- somehow be recognized and identified when he • 
Problem came. But the very idea of such a Personage 
was vague, and must be formed ; was crude, and must be 
freed from alloy ; was hazy with ages of dim imagination, 
and must be resolved into an object of common life. John's 
own identification of him was made not from personal 
acquaintance, but from a mystic sign (see' John i, 31, 32). 
All that the Christ was to do and be was yet to be revealed ; 
and even John, as we have seen (Matt, xi, 2), became doubt- 
ful of his own identification. Meanwhile, if Jesus was indeed 
the Coming One, how should he meet men's expectation in 
such a way that they should not misapprehend or misuse 
the fulfillment of their hopes, and that the idea of what the 
Messiah and his kingdom essentially are should be formed in 
right principle and proportion ? Such was the problem which 
Jesus at the outset of his ministry had to raise and solve. 

The solution of it was the simplest and sanest possible ; 
a model of quiet wisdom and good sense. 

To begin with, he came assuming nothing. He went from 
Galilee to John's baptism as a man of the common people, 
a layman, a carpenter from the obscure town of Nazareth. 
He did not assume to be the Messiah nor claim any superi- 
ority to ordinary manhood. He left that rather for men to 
find out from their own recognition of him. The attesting 
sign of his unique greatness, and the voice from heaven, 
were personal revelations perceived only by him and John 
(Matt, iii, 16, 17; Mark i, 10, 11 ; John i, 33, 34). Nor, 
on the other hand, did he assume not to be the Messiah. 
Rather, the words he spoke and the works he did corre- 
sponded naturally to a more than human greatness in him. 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

He simply lived that wise, balanced, consistent life which 
men came to recognize as the normal life of manhood, and 
let that speak for itself ; while, at the same time, if occasions 
of supernatural wisdom and power came his way they were 
used as a matter of course, as belonging naturally to his 
plane of being. It was all regarded as in the course and 
compass of a true human life. The answer which Jesus 
himself gave at the end to Pilate, when the latter asked him 
whether he was really a king, kept itself within human terms. 
'' To this end have I been born," he said, '' and to this end 
am I come into the world, that I should bear witness unto 
the truth" (John xviii, 37). To be a true man, neither shirk- 
ing nor transcending the claims of true manhood, was his 
simple and consistent answer to the expectations of his age. 

Note. That Jesus' design was not only to meet and satisfy but also 
to correct and clarify men's expectations is indicated by the course he 
took. To quote from H. B. Sharman : " If he considered himself called 
to be the Christ of expectation, no harm could come from being acknowl- 
edged as such ; if, on the other hand, he was conscious of being pos- 
sessed by new conceptions, he would hardly choose to make claims or 
awaken hopes by talking in Messianic phraseology." ^ 

From the outset of his ministry the human life presented 
itself to him, and he in turn presented it to men, as a kind 
of problem to be solved, with its questions of order and 
emphasis, its progressive stages, its proper coordination of 
elements. For this purpose he chose disciples to be with 
him, observers and learners, taking them into a sort of part- 
nership, as if all were to work out the problem together and 
all were to share in its avails. In other words, the Christ- 
problem was propounded to the world as an all-men's prob- 
lem, and not as the monopoly of one ; and to every man its 
duties and possibilities were freely open. Thus his ministry 
was in the most valid sense the translation of the Christ- 
idea into terms of the noblest and deepest manhood. 

^ Biblical Worlds January, 1910, p. 60. 

[536] 



THE SON OF MAN 



III 



Initiating the Christ-Idea. How Jesus chose to work out' 
the problem of his mission, by identifying the Messianic hfe 
with the typical life of manhood and carrying this to its 
height, may be seen, in its beginnings, in some of the early 
experiences of his ministry. 

While John the Baptist was preaching and making dis- 
ciples, Jesus came to him ; not, however, to become his 
His Baptism disciplc, but to receive baptism at his hands 
and its (Matt, iii, 13-17; Mark i, 9-1 1 ; Luke iii, 21, 22). 

^^"^ According to St. Matthew's account John was re- 

luctant to baptize Jesus, recognizing that in the case of one 
so exalted as he the symbolism of the rite was meaningless. 
Jesus, however, interpreting it for himself as the fulfillment 
of a righteous requirement, insisted on his baptism as a 
means of identifying himself with all who would accept the 
ordinance (Matt, iii, 15). It was his first public act of tak- 
ing man's duty without assuming to be more than man ; 
his symbolic way of saying that his life's problem required 
not a break with the past or with men's good customs, but 
a fulfillment of all its good prom.ise. It was immediately 
answered by recognition from heaven. He was aware of 
the form of a dove resting upon him (a new symbolism), 
and a voice saying, '' Thou art my beloved Son, in thee 
I am well pleased " (Mark i, 1 1 ; cf. Psa. ii, 7 ; Isa. xlii, i). 
It is of no importance to inquire whether or not more per- 
sons than Jesus and John were aware of this supernatural sign 
(cf. John i, 32). Enough that Jesus himself was conscious 
of his unique distinction, and that this was the dominating 
element in his life's problem. To him the essence of Messiah- 
ship was to be the Son of God. It was the assurance of 
this that guaranteed his high mission in the world. Thence- 
forth he lived and worked in the spirit of that idea. As 
Son of God he was to be the embodiment of the Father's 

• [537] 



GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

nature and will and grace ; to reproduce perfectly, as it were, 
the family likeness and character. 

The first act of Jesus after his baptism indicates his sense 
of the tremendous life problem involved in being the Son of 
His Wilder- God (Matt, iv, i-i I ; Mark i, 12, 13 ; Luke iv, 
ness Ordeal 1-13). '' Straightway the spirit driveth him forth 
into the wilderness," — in such strong phrase St. Mark de- 
scribes the mysterious impulse that possessed him. It seems 
the evangelist's way of describing how deep was Jesus' crav- 
ing for solitude and for opportunity to think out the career 
that his divine distinction entailed. The Son of God must 
see and choose the godlike way of impressing himself upon 
men and of building a kingdom in the world ; for to be the 
Son of God included all this. 

If the temptation of Jesus was a fact, the account of it 
must have come ultimately from him ; for no reporter or 
observer was present. The terms in which it is described 
must therefore be such as are at the same time most real 
to him and most apprehensible to men. But the depth of 
such an inner experience is beyond the power of literal 
words to convey. Each individual temptation is told rather 
in a kind of parable or symbol, whose scope or principle is 
much greater than a single act. The symbolic act suggested 
— making bread of stones, casting one's self from a pin- 
nacle, giving formal obeisance to a potentate — may indeed 
seem odd and arbitrary, until we realize the spirit of it ; and 
then nothing can be more real and significant. 

The temptations thus reported of Jesus all bore on the 
question how the Son of God should use his power. The 
reiterated plea of the evil spirit was, '' If thou be the Son 
of God," do this and that. Jesus' answer in each case limits 
itself to what man should be and do. Jesus will not use his 
divine endowment in a way that humanity cannot share in 
or benefit by ; nor will he yield to worldly and selfish prin- 
ciples of mastership. To do any of these proposed things 

[538]. 



THE SON OF MAN 

would at once put him on a plane of living where humanity 
could not be at one with him ; and his sense of divinity im- 
pelled him rather to union with all and to fellowship in good 
works. His answers to Satan, all quoted from Scripture and 
from a single book of Scripture (namely, Deuteronomy ; cf . 
Deut. viii, 3 ; vi, 16 ; vi, 13 ; x, 20),^ are but a recourse to 
the store of literary guidance that has long been available to 
every man. So in all his temptations, though he is aware that 
unlimited power and privilege are his, he makes the use of 
it most godlike by most truly observing human limitations. 

After his return from the forty days' ordeal of the wilder- 
ness, Jesus' first visit was to the scene of his baptism, where 
His Ministry J^^^ ^^^ ^^^^^ making disciples. Here he began a 
of FamiUar ministry, not officially, as if he would be either a 
rien s ip ^^^^^ ^^ coadjutor to John, but in the private way 
of personal intercourse and conversation (John i, 19-iv, 42). 
The gospel of John gives this part of his history ; unmen- 
tioned by the other evangelists, perhaps because it was so 
private and domestic, or more likely because the disciples 
from whom the synoptic Gospels came were not yet called. 
As Jesus mingled with the crowd at the Jordan, John the 
Baptist immeciiately recognized him as the one who had been 
supernaturally pointed out ; and two of his disciples, detach- 
ing themselves from the company, followed Jesus. Three 
were added to their number on this and the succeeding day, 
as they journeyed northward toward Galilee. 

So his first appeal was to young men of high and pure 
ideals, who obeyed the attraction of his personality and 
attached themselves to him as companions and learners. 
Some of them, it would seem, were acquaintances (cf . John i, 
45, where Jesus is spoken of as well known), who first be- 
came aware of their neighbor's high distinction by the testi- 
mony of John, which they seem to have accepted as a matter 
of course. 

"^ ^ See above, p. 227. 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

His fame as a teacher and worker of signs (as the author 
of the Fourth Gospel calls his miracles) rapidly spread both 
in Galilee and Jerusalem, to which latter place he went to 
attend a feast and meet the leaders of the nation (see John 
ii, 13). All this, until John's work was broken off by his 
imprisonment (see Matt, iv, 12), may be regarded as the 
private and domestic preliminary to Jesus' ministry, while 
he was, so to speak, broaching his ideas among those who 
would respond to them most simply and candidly. It is in 
these early months of his work that we meet with the ingenu- 
ous young men who became his most intimate companions ; 
with his family circle of mother and kinsfolk at Cana and 
Capernaum (John ii, i— 12) ; with men of open mind and 
thought like Nicodemus (John iii) ; and with people of less 
cultured and sophisticated mind like the woman and people 
of Samaria (John iv). The prevailing note of this period of 
his career is familiar intercourse and companionship ; as if 
he would first get acquainted with the various classes with 
whom he was to deal. 

In course of time, after his distinctive work had revealed 
its character, he came to Nazareth, where his early life had 
His Mani- been passed, and where his old neighbors were 
festo at naturally eager to see their townsman who was 
becoming so famous (Luke iv, 16-30). On the 
Sabbath, as his custom was, he entered the synagogue and, 
standing up to read, selected and applied to himself the 
passage found in Isaiah Ixi, 1-3, wherein the Servant of 
Jehovah, described by the Second Isaiah, is represented as 
taking upon himself and defining the spirit of his ministry. 
This reading, and the accompanying comment, may be taken 
as Jesus' conception of the Messiahship to which he was 
anointed, told to those who knew him best and had always 
known him. 

By this manifesto, instead of connecting his work with 
the popular apocalyptic visions, with their ambitious notions 

[540] 



THE SON OF MAN 

of a spectacular kingdom and a despotic monarch, he iden- 
tified himself definitely with the meekest and most unob- 
trusive character portrayed in Scripture : the Servant of 
Jehovah, whose spirit of life was wisdom, sympathy, and 
silent sacrifice (cf. Isa. xlii, 1-4 ; Matt, xii, 18-21). He made 
no assumption of grandeur or dignity. He claimed only a 
career of good-will, good works, and universal helpfulness. 

To identify himself, however, with one of the most sacred 
prophecies seemed to his townsmen too great an effrontery. 
Besides, he had declined to work for mere display such 
miracles as he had wrought elsewhere. So they would not 
listen to him ; and his subsequent ministry had to be carried 
on away from his home. 

Throughout his ministry, as these and many other inci- 
dents show, Jesus, though conscious all the while of his 
His Adopted Messianic distinction, was concerned that that fact 
Title should not be proclaimed or assumed on his part, 

but recognized on the part of men. He was concerned also 
that men should know and honor him not for his super- 
natural powers nor for any display of greatness but for the 
intrinsic truth of manhood that they saw in him. Thus, as 
they companied familiarly with him, they were getting some- 
thing beyond personal acquaintance and intimacy. They were 
learning what manhood raised to its noblest powers is, and 
what life is under the leading of the divine Spirit, in the 
works and experiences of human life. It was this that he 
had at heart. He desired that the Christ men came to 
recognize in him should be the essential Christ and not 
depend on his fame or his profession. Only so could it be 
of practical and personal value to them. 

So, though when required on oath to acknowledge him- 
self he said plainly that he was Son of God and Messiah 
(see Matt, xxvi, 63, 64), yet the title by which he habitually 
called himself was Son of Man ; by which he would seem 
to have meant the true and typical man, or, as we should 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

say, manhood completely realized. Even this designation 
he took not assertively but indirectly ; speaking of the Son 
of Man in the third person, as if the latter were an idealized 
being whose character was to be manifested through disci- 
pline and experience. The question what the true man should 
do and be seemed to be on his mind at all stages of his career, 
and for other dignity apart from this he had no ambition. 

In adopting this title Jesus chose a term which was com- 
paratively unworn, though it does occur with somewhat hazy 
meaning in some passages of the apocalyptic literature. It 
was a term, too, which as used would rouse no false or pre- 
mature connotations in men's minds. This was an impor- 
tant point gained. To have called himself the Messiah at 
the outset would have been to burden himself with a title 
which men had already filled with their own preconceived 
ideas, and it would have been hard if not impossible to divest 
it of accretions and infuse the true meaning, both human 
and divine, into it. To have called himself the Son of God 
would have been at once to separate his personality from the 
interests of common humanity and to have transferred him- 
self to a sphere above them. But in calling himself Son of 
Man, Jesus was adopting a term by which he could make 
common cause with all men ; and by filling the idea with 
the fuller meaning of his life he could raise it, and with it 
the whole conception of manhood worth, to its highest 
power, where, indeed, it would be equivalent to the other 
terms, '' Christ " or '' Messiah," and '' Son of God." It was 
really the most modest claim that he could make, considering 
what he was, but as he translated it into actual life it con- 
tained the values of the highest. And he lived as if it were 
his one business on earth to explore and realize to the full 
manhood's possibilities as actuated by the Spirit of God. 

Notes, i. Conventional Use of the Ter7n ^'Son of Gody The term 
" Son of God " was already much worn in the world's use, as a compli- 
mentary epithet for great rulers and leaders. It was in some such vague 

[542] 



THE SON OF MAN 

sense, doubtless, that a Roman centurion was moved to call Jesus a son 
of God (Matt, xxvii, 54) on witnessing the portents attending his death. 
2. Jesus'' Use of the Term " Son of Man'' '' We must never forget," 
says Professor Sanday, " that this is the name which our Lord chose 
specially for Himself, and which He appears to have preferred above 
every other. The other names He purposely kept in the background ; 
but this He used freely and without hesitation, though even this He em- 
ploys objectively and in the third person, hinting rather than expressly 
claiming that in speaking of the Son of Man He is speaking of Himself.-^ 

II. The Literary Element in Jesus' Ministry 

Jesus himself wrote nothing. What record vi^e have of 
his words and works comes from reports made in the Chris- 
tian community, for teaching and catechizing purposes, and 
traceable to about a generation after his death. This record, 
which we have in the four gospels, consists of oral dis- 
courses, given mostly in a familiar and conversational way, 
with no apparent attempt at literary or rhetorical effect. Any 
thought, indeed, of self-conscious or academic art in con- 
nection with Jesus' words is almost like a profanation. As 
we study them more intimately, however, we become aware 
how exactly they are adapted to their subject, their occasion, 
and their audience. This is their obvious literary excellence ; 
and this, of course, belongs to that perfection of art which 
conceals the processes of art and identifies it with nature. 

That Jesus' discourses produced on his discriminating 
hearers the effect of fine and finished utterance is indicated 
in the question asked about him by the Jews of the capital : 
" How knoweth this man letters, having never learned } " 
(John vii, 15), and by the answer of certain officers sent to 
arrest him : *' Never man so spake " (John vii, 46). The 
same thought was dimly in the mind of the common multi- 
tude, though they could not well define it, when they 
expressed their astonishment at the self-evidencing charac- 
ter of his words, so different from the style of the scribes 

1 Sanday, " Life of Christ in Recent Research," pp. 194, 195. 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

(Matt, vii, 28, 29). It was a recognition of the matter and 
manner of his speech as a prime Uterary power. 

The main element of Uterary perfection in Jesus' words 
is their perfect keeping ahke with a human personality and 
with all that we can conceive of the divine. The difficulty 
for critics who would deny these utterances to him is to find 
a writer great enough to have invented them. , Such a writer 
must needs be of Messianic caliber. Even though trans- 
mitted to us through the memory of his hearers, there is a 
quality in his words as unique in literature as is his person- 
ality in history and human experience. 

It does not belong to the scope of this book to give in 
analysis or systematic arrangement the subject matter of his 
teachings. We are concerned rather with their literary rela- 
tions : that is, their manner of expression and adaptedness 
to audience and occasion. To this end we will consider 
various aspects of his teachings, as these were called forth 
by the circumstances in which he was placed. 



His General Public Utterances. '' These words of mine " 
{mou tous logons toutous) is the phrase by which Jesus 
refers to the Sermon on the Mount, which he is just finish- 
ing (Matt, vii, 24, 26). It makes an unpretending literary 
claim for his public speech : no display of eloquence, no 
assumption of scholarly logic ; but just familiar talk. And 
yet it has not the loose discursiveness of ordinary talk ; it is 
close-knit and ordered, and there are no superfluous words. 

The so-called Sermon on the Mount, given most fully in 
Matthew v-vii, and in substance in Luke vi, 20-49, "^^Y be 
taken as the type of discourse by which Jesus imparted his 
teaching to receptive and candid audiences. It was addressed 
to his newly made disciples (see Matt, v, i ; Luke vi, 20) ; 
men who had attached themselves to him not out of idle 
curiosity or with critical design, but with desire to learn and 

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THE SON OF MAN 

think for themselves. But it was overheard by multitudes 
(Matt, vii, 28 ; Luke vi, 17) ; for his discourses were never 
esoteric nor contained things meant for a mystery to one 
class and clearness to another. They were really addressed 
to mankind in general, and used the ideas current among 
ordinary people. Both the disciples and the larger multi- 
tudes could Ije assumed to be acquainted with the law and 
with the religious sentiment of their day, and it was upon 
these that he built his teachings. 

It is worth while to note how the style of Jesus' public 
utterances compares with the Old Testament types of style. 
Comparison ^^^ ancient prophets, addressing the nation as a 
with Earlier whole and at times of national crisis, were impas- 
cnp ure sioned, oratorical, vehement, with a tendency to 
the' rhythmical and poetic. The sages, or wise men, address- 
ing audiences in the didactic tone, developed the mashal or 
proverb, as a vehicle for such utterance, to a fine artistry of 
phrasing and pointed sentence structure ; rising at times, as 
in Job and the first section of Proverbs, to sustained poetic 
sublimity and intensity. The later writings, like the megil- 
loth, were to a notable degree keyed to the more self- 
conscious and refined literary forms. ^ In Jesus' teaching we 
find no lack of poetic beauty, or sturdy vigor, or clean-cut 
phrasing and point ; but all this is subdued to the tone of 
the conversational, the familiar, the idiom of common life and 
affairs. Pascal, himself a master of style, remarks of this 
quality: ''Jesus Christ said grand things so simply that it 
seems as though he had not thought about them, and yet so 
clearly that one sees he must have reflected upon them. This 
clearness joined with this simplicity is wonderful." ^ This 
quite befitted his supreme object, which was to be helpful to 
all men, from the humblest up, to men not in specialized 
classes or as a nation, but as living the universal life of man. 

1 Cf. p. 484, above. 

2 Pascal, " Thoughts," Benj. E. Smith trans., p. 121. 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

"What is this? a new teaching!" was the response of 
his hearers at Capernaum when they heard his words in the 
Contrasts Synagogue and saw them backed with mighty 
with Current spiritual power (Mark i, 27). Of the quahties in 
® ° ^ his general public discourse which reveal him as 
a unique teacher and personality, we may here note three 
salient things. « 

1. Their uniform employment of the simplest language 
and imagery, dealing with plain truths of life. This was a 
new note in his day ; for the scribes, who were the accredited 
teachers, tended to wire-drawn and petty interpretations of 
the law and to a wooden, academic style. Jesus' discourses 
deal much in the familiar analogical figures simile and meta- 
phor ; and these are always drawn from everyday objects 
and carried enough into detail to indicate the full value of 
their lesson. This may be exemplified by the so-called Ser- 
mon on the Mount in Matthew v-vii. After the Beatitudes 
(v, I- 1 2), which constitute a kind of text, the discourse is 
introduced by the metaphors of the salt and the light (vss. 
13-16). The detailed similes of the houses on the rock and 
on the sand (vii, 24-27), which form the peroration, are a 
summary and practical application of the whole. The figures 
of the lilies of the field (vi, 28-30), of the mote and the 
beam (vii, 3-5), and of the good and the corrupt trees (vii, 
18-20) are instances selected at random which may show 
how masterfully he employed homely imagery for the weighti- 
est thought. It was his power to make great elemental truths 
clear and self-evidencing which called forth the remark 
of a biographer, '' The common people heard him gladly " 
(Mark, xii, 37). 

2. Their prominently paradoxical and thought-provoking 
cast. In the old mashal or proverb literature there was often 
cultivated, for the sake of stimulating thought, a kind of rid- 
dling or enigma element; one species of mashal, indeed, 
was called hidah, '' dark saying " (cf. Prov. i, 6). Something 

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THE SON OF MAN 

of this principle is freely made use of by Jesus. He is not 
averse to using a paradox or half-truth when his purpose 
of making men think is served thereby. One is av^'are 
of this as soon as one reflects on the Beatitudes, which 
ascribe blessedness to just the opposite qualities from those 
which are usually accounted blessed, — to the poor in spirit, 
the mourners, the meek, the maligned and persecuted. He 
states some of his important teachings, also, in a form so 
strange and one-sided as to rouse a vigorous protest in the 
hearer's mind, until the meaning is subjected to a spiritual 
test. Such, for instance, are his injunction to turn the left 
cheek to him who smites you on the right (Matt, v, 39) ; his 
remark that one who follows him must hate his nearest 
earthly kin (Luke xiv, 26) ; and his solemn declaration, 
which he himself followed out, that he who loses his life in 
the cause of truth shall find it (Matt, x, 39). In all these, it 
would seem, Jesus deliberately accepts the risk of scorn and 
misunderstanding, trusting to men's saner second thoughts. 
But like all his words they are an appeal to men's spiritual 
good sense ; and men of a spirit like his will understand 
and appropriate them. Our many centuries of conversance 
with them have adjusted our minds to these words of his ; 
but as first uttered they must have been to a degree startling 
and mystifying. 

3. Their absoluteness of assertion and tone. This is espe- 
cially notable in the section of the Sermon on the Mount 
wherein Jesus deals with the Mosaic law and with men's 
traditions (Matt, v, 17-48). Of the hard and stereotyped 
ideas that prevailed concerning murder, adultery, divorce, 
oath-taking, retaliation, his pronouncements were : '' Ye have 
heard that it was said by them of old time, . . . but / say 
unto you " ; thus correcting and reversing long-established 
ideas and customs on his own personal assertion. His first 
person singular is not egoism ; it is spiritual authority. In 
the same way, by both precept and example, he took such 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

liberties as a sound spirit dictated with the unwritten customs 
of the sabbath and of fasting (cf. Matt, xii, i-8 ; Mark ii, 
1 8, 19) ; making these things what they were meant to be, 
not ends of hfe or cultus but means and factors of mercy 
and sincerity. All this, which handled old traditions so freely, 
was really in the interests of a more perfectly fulfilled law 
and a higher because more inward standard of righteousness. 
Jesus' absoluteness of assertion is founded on truth which 
once heard cannot be gainsaid. The sound sense of man, 
seeing it, intuitively assents to it. Hence Jesus does not 
present truth by process of argumentation or philosophy, as 
if it had to pass through uncertain logical stages. It can, 
however, be made clear by illustration and analogy, and these 
means are freely employed. But the inner logic of his words 
is intuitive and absolute. Men cannot hear them without the 
sense that they are authoritative for conscience, nor gainsay 
them without doing violence to their spiritual nature. It 
was this absolute quality of his words, especially, which so 
contrasted Jesus' method with that of the scribes. 

II 

His Teaching in Parables. There came a time in Jesus' 
ministry when, rather abruptly it would seern, he changed 
the manner of his teaching. The disciples, indeed, who 
were in constant intercourse with him, he continued to 
instruct by literal and expository methods, giving them the 
more inward elements of his truth as they were able to 
apprehend them. This is especially noticeable in the dis- 
courses reported in the gospel of John ; and even these he 
regarded as relatively primitive (cf. John iii, 12 ; xvi, 12). 
For the floating multitude, however, who might hear him 
only casually, or be actuated merely by the curiosity or en- 
thusiasm of the crowd, he put his teaching in the form of 
parable. This new departure, with the first group of para- 
bles thus given, is narrated in Matthew xiii and Mark iv. 

[ 548.] 



THE SON OF MAN 

The new style of discourse at once excited inquiry. 
'' Why speakest thou unto them in parables ? " the disciples 
asked Jesus when they were alone with him again. His 
answer indicated that he had adopted that manner of teach- 
ing in order to discriminate between different kinds of 
hearers : between those who were in an inner circle with 
him and outsiders. '' To you," he said, '' has been given the 
secret of the kingdom of God ; but to the outsiders it must 
all come in a Parable, that, as Isaiah said, they may see 
and yet not see " ^ (Mark iv, 1 1 ; cf. Isa. vi, 9, 10). With a 
similar implication he had ended his first parable with the 
words, '' He that hath ears, let him hear" (Matt, xiii, 9) ; 
as if his parables required a peculiar sense of things to 
understand. 

In the parables of Jesus we see the highest development 
of the mashaly or analogical type of literary discourse. 
The Wisdom This, it will be remembered, is the vehicle of the 
of the Method Hebrew Wisdom, employed in various forms in 
the Old Testament, mostly in maxims or proverbs. The 
parables of Jesus are not works of fancy, like fables, wherein, 
as in Jotham's parable (Judg. ix, 8-15), inanimate things are 
personified and talk ; not allegories, like Our Lady Wisdom 
in Proverbs (Prov. viii, ix), wherein abstract qualities figure 
as characters : they are literal situations and incidents of every- 
day life, so told as to suggest an inner and spiritual lesson. 
Thus for the instruction of the multitudes, or as he called 
them ''outsiders" {tois exo), he chose the medium which 
of all literary forms is most attractive, most easily grasped 
and remembered, — namely, the story or narrative form. 
So far as form was concerned, a story would be much more 
easily apprehended than a logically built or closely com- 
pacted discourse ; and thus its truth would be available for 
common as well as for cultured men. 

1 See Burkitt, " The Gospel History and its Transmission," pp. 84 ff. 
I have quoted his translation of Jesus' remark. 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

Note. In the section of Tennyson's " In Memoriam " referred to and 
partly quoted on page 527 above, this distinction between expository and 
narrative discourse, as related to its intelligibility for different capacities 
of hearers, is thus described : 

\ 

For Wisdom dealt with mortal powers, 
Where truth in closest words shall fail, 
When truth embodied in a tale 

Shall enter in at lowly doors. 

But this is only one side of the matter. Jesus adopted 
the parable method, he said, in order that the outsiders 
might see and yet not see. There was an esoteric purpose 
in it. The story has a meaning beyond its literal details. 
It must be translated from literal to spiritual, or, as we may 
say, from outer realism to inner. To this end the hearer is 
not left passive and merely receptive : he must exert his 
own powers of realization and interpretation to get a spiritual 
value out of it. And to do this he must approach it in the 
spirit of it. The parables are like a combination lock, which 
cannot be opened until one has the right combination ; 
then all is clear, and its truth is grasped in fit relation and 
balance.^ 

There is wisdom also in its lack of argumentative or 
impassioned appeal. Being a story true to life, it cannot 
be denied or disproved. The hearer can take exception 
only to what he imagines it to mean, not to what is literally 
said. At the same time, being an appeal to the reflective 
powers, the parable, as such, radiates rather light than heat. 
There is nothing in it to incite passion, no catchwords of 
fanaticism or revolution. The parables are thus a simple 
yet masterly means of getting the rank and file of the peo- 
ple to think. They listen in dispassionate mood, as people 
who are merely entertained ; and yet until they are spirit- 
ually adjusted to the implication of the story, they do not 
understand. 

1 Cf. above, p. 452. 

[55°] 



THE SON OF MAN 

It was a time when just such wisdom as this was impera- 
tively needed. A main reason why Jesus chose the parable 
The Secret of form of public teaching just at this stage of his 
the Kingdom ministry relates to the great expectation which 
was prevalent, and whose fulfillment both he and John had 
announced as near at hand. That expectation was now to 
be met and its idea clarified : the idea of the Kingdom of 
Heaven. His ministry was just then at the height of its 
popularity, and crowds were pressing upon him to hear his 
words and see his works of power. His first parables had 
to be spoken from a boat, the crowd upon the shore was so 
great (Matt, xiii, 2). Their interest in him was the interest 
of the crowd. Their minds were inflamed with the notion 
of a coming kingdom ; and he seemed to them so eminently 
fitted to inaugurate it that, as the Fourth Gospel records, 
they were minded to take him by force and make him king 
(John vi, 15). Their conceptions of a kingdom, however, 
were of the rudest sort. We may describe them in the 
words of Dr. Alfred Plummer : '' The ideas of the multi- 
tude," he says, " were for the most part vague ; and in their 
want of knowledge they degraded* and materialized it. They 
thought of the Kingdom as a perpetual banquet. The ideas 
of the upper classes were more definite, but not more spiritual. 
They thought of it as a political revolution. Roman rule 
was to be overthrown, and a Jewish monarchy of great 
magnificence was to be restored." ^ These ideas, such as 
they were, the stir of the times and the enthusiasm of the 
crowd had stimulated to the danger point. It was a situa- 
tion wherein untold consequences hung on the wisdom of 
Jesus' words and acts. 

Here then, we may truly say, was a crisis in Jesus' career 
of teaching : a supreme problem for literary sagacity and skill. 
The tense situation must be dealt with. It would tolerate 
no delay or evasion. Those crude ideas must be corrected. 

1 Plummer, " Commentary on Matthew," p. 62. 

[SSI] 



GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

Not only must what was erroneous in them be cleared 
away, but the true conception must be put in its place. 
Jesus must define the kingdom' in such a way that the com- 
mon people's enthusiasm, so inflammable and eager, should 
be restrained until sane and reasonable thinking could set 
in and take control ; and at the same time he must impart 
a wholly new principle and point of view. Evidently the 
situation called not for eloquence or impassioned exhortation. 
The crowds must not be incited to act but sobered and 
diverted to think ; and as the upshot of their thinking they 
must be made to realize what this kingdom of heaven 
essentially is. 

Accordingly, Jesus' earlier parables, fitted to the capacity 
of the multitude, devote themselves to explaining, in illus- 
trations drawn from common life and experience, what the 
kingdom of heaven is like. It is like seed sown ; like 
growth from a mustard seed ; like leaven ; like search for 
a lost coin ; like investing all one's property in a precious 
pearl. It is notable how many of these parables of the 
kingdom, and especially the early ones that start the idea, 
are concerned with the phenomenon of growth, of evolution. 
It is Jesus' way of showing men that the kingdom is not 
a spectacular thing, coming upon men from without and 
astonishing the world, but a natural process arising from a 
new vital germ within their hearts. By analogies drawn 
from various aspects of husbandry he shows that the king- 
dom is '' like a man sowing his seed, which then grows 
from stage to stage naturally and silently, until at last the 
harvest is ripe." ^ (Cf. Mark iv, 26-29.) From these analo- 
gies of growth, which he simply suggested, letting them 
work on the minds of the crowd, he could go on naturally 
in his more literal expositions to teach that instead of a sud- 
den and startling affair the kingdom was something whose 
coming could not be dated by external signs at all, because 

1 Burkitt, " The Gospel History and its Transmission," p. 87. 

[552] 



THE SON OF MAN 

it was within the heart of man (Luke xvii, 20, 21). And 
instead of a government unde;* the sway of the ambition or 
self-indulgence of rulers, it was a character developed in the 
heart of the subject, a character growing by its own inner 
forces to noblest things. Thus, to men whose minds were 
occupied with the gratification of the senses he gives in 
parable form the substance of the idea later expressed by 
St. Paul, that ''the kingdom of God is not eating and 
drinking, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy 
Spirit" (Rom. xiv, 17). . 

Nor was it merely to the floating and unattached multitude 
to whom the coming kingdom was a luxury and a banquet 
From Lay to that his parables were addressed, though he began 
Learned ^[^^^ them. To such it was fitting that the king- 
dom be described in evolutionary terms (seed sown, leaven, 
secret growth), to correct and mollify their fanatical ideas 
of revolution. To men of leading also, whose ideas of empire 
were more rational, he employed tl^e same manner of teach- 
ing, in somewhat more elaborately constructed parables ; his 
object being to regulate men's ambitions and to make them 
sensible not only of rights and emoluments but of duties and 
responsibilities. These worldly ambitions were frequently 
thrust upon him, even by the disciples who were most 
familiar with his way (see, for an instance, Mark x, 35-41). 
Being so near him, and seeing the grandeur of his person- 
ality, they took occasion to put in their plea as office-seekers 
in the coming monarchy. Even after his resurrection these 
material ideas still clung to them ; and one of his last teach- 
ings before he ascended was to disabuse their minds of a 
premature notion of the kingdom (Acts i, 6, 7). So to the 
disciples themselves, and to all thinking men, many parables 
were given to illustrate their attitude to the kingdom. He 
taught them through this analogical method that they were 
like stewards, responsible for the administration of property 
(Luke xvi, 1-12) ; like laborers, hired to work in a vineyard 

[553] 



GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

(Matt. XX, 1-16) ; like men intrusted with capital which was 
to be used in a master's business (Matt, xxv, 14-30) ; like 
bridesmaids at a wedding, keeping their lamps filled and 
ready to meet the bridegroom (Matt, xxv, 1-13). Some of 
his later parables, also, were aimed at the responsible leaders 
of the nation, who were recreant to their high trust : like 
stewards who abused the servants sent to receive the master's 
due and finally killed the son (Matt, xxi, 33-41) ; and like 
invited guests who would not attend a feast and whose place 
was accordingly taken by an assemblage of poor and crippled 
(Matt, xxii, 1-14). All these have direct reference to the 
idea of the kingdom, setting forth in narrative and as it 
were in situ the active working of its spiritual principles. 

Thus Jesus' parables, simple and transparent as they were, 
in effect were his most revolutionary utterances, because they 
aimed at reversing men's standards of values. This, how- 
ever, not by suppressing their natural ambitions in life, but 
by clarifying and directing these. It was a kind of teach- 
ing which set the elements of life in sound relation and 
proportion, so that men from the humblest up could feel 
what things were of supreme importance and what merely 
secondary or valueless. 

Ill 

His Encounters with Human Falsity. The general tone 
of Jesus' intercourse with men, it would seem, was gentle 
and gracious, patient with the sincere-minded however dull 
or feeble, and so little disposed to display that a biographer 
found in him the fulfillment of Isaiah's description of 
Jehovah's servant : 

He will not strive nor cry aloud ; 

Neither will any one hear his voice in the streets. 

(Matt, xii, 19; cf. Isa. xlii, 2) 

His mission, as he said, was not to judge and censure men, 
but to give them such light that they could judge themselves 

[554] 



THE SON OF MAN 

(cf. John xii, 47, with ix, 39 ; Luke xii, 14). Hence his 
general manner of teaching : not seeking to convince or re- 
fute by argument but to make the truth luminous by illustra- 
tion and example, so that men could see for themselves. 

One response he sought, however, one reciprocity of re- 
lation between himself and his hearers ; namely, sincerity, 
openness, and candor of mind. Any kind of falsity or pre- 
tense or guile called forth from him an answer that un- 
earthed its ungenuineness and revealed the truth as it were 
in white light. 

We note this especially in two ways. 

Almost from the beginning of his ministry Jesus was 

beset by men, generally of the leading and cultured class, 

who were seeking: not to learn the truth but to 

I. Taking , . . , ? , , , , 

the Wise in ensnare him m his words, and thereby get a pre- 
their Own ^g^t on legal or political grounds against him. 
They would come with smooth professions of re- 
spect and sincerity ; would propound questions as if they 
had real doubts about them ; and yet with sheer duplicity 
and hatred in their hearts. He saw the pretense and falsity 
of it all, yet he answered them according to what they pre- 
tended to be. They were posing as truth-seekers ; he gave 
them straight truth. This he did by lifting their ideas out 
of the petty and sophisticated slough in which they were 
mired to a higher and more reasonable, which is to say a 
spiritual, plane. It was like setting the light of intuitive 
truth over against the ingenuities of rabbinical hair-splitting 
and logic. 

Thus it came about that by his answers to these insincere 
questions, answers given as it were on the defensive, he 
brought out some of the profoundest truths of his teaching. 
Such, for instance, was his reply about the resurrection, 
wherein he removes the truth at one stroke from the fogs 
of speculation and conjecture to the clear ground of the 

1 The heading taken from Job v, 13 ; words of Eliphaz. 
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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

self-evident (Matt, xxii, 23-33). His reply about the tribute 
money (Matt, xxii, 15-22) not only silenced their duplicity 
but put every man into his reasonable relation both to God 
and to the state. Nor did he stop with the defensive, — with 
merely answering their questions. He turned the tables upon 
them, asking them questions in turn. Instances are his 
question about the significance of John's baptism^ (Matt, xxi, 
23-27) and his question about their conception of the Christ 
(Matt, xxii, 41-45) — things which they could not answer with- 
out betraying their insincerity and their unspiritual ideals. 
They had invented dilemmas in which they tried in vain to 
entrap him ; he, employing their own method, put them with 
ease into dilemmas from which they could not escape and 
remain the men they were. Yet his answers and his ques- 
tions alike were not negative but eminently constructive. 
Their object was not controversy nor even self-defense, but 
vital truth. The result of these encounters it is important 
to note. In Matthew it is described, '' And no one was able 
to answer him a word, neither durst any man from that 
day forth ask him any more questions " (Matt, xxii, 46 ; 
cf. Mark xii, 34). To which Mark adds, '' And the common 
people heard him gladly " (Mark xii, 37). The words so 
baffling to the insincere and sophisticated were clear and 
edifying to simple and candid minds. 

It was inevitable, of course, that Jesus should come in 
contact with the leaders of thought and opinion. It was his 
mission, indeed, to teach not the common people only, or 
any one class, but all who would meet him as man to man, 
including the teachers and cultured ones of the nation. So 
all the leading classes, at the fitting occasions, had their 
encounters with him : the Scribes, who were the leaders in 
learning ; the Pharisees, who were the orthodox authorities 
in religion ; and the Sadducees, who were of the aristocratic 
and governing class, worldly and skeptical. Most of the 
opposition to him came from these classes ; the secret plots 

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THE SON OF MAN 

against him, also, were instigated by them ; and his most 
sweeping denunciations were directed against these repre- 
sentatives of learning and religion. It is important there- 
fore that we understand on what grounds there should have 
risen this mutual antagonism. 

The prevailing mildness and graciousness of Jesus' man- 
ner makes the effect all the more impressive when he takes 
2. Unearth- occasion to employ the literary weapon of invec- 
ing Moral tive. It gives us a sense of the tremendous 
ReUgious reserve power which he could wield if he would, 
Shams while at the same time our thought is concen- 

trated on the thing that could so move him from his wonted 
orbit of. gentleness. And we find the issue a very plain and 
simple one. It is the antipathy of the true to the false, of 
the sincere and genuine to crookedness and sham. 

Jesus' most trenchant denunciations were directed against 
the Scribes and Pharisees. He seems to have taken a par- 
ticular occasion to utter these ; it was in Jerusalem in the 
last week of his ministry, just after his encounter with the 
leaders of the people. These denunciations are most fully 
reported in what are sometimes called the Seven Woes, in 
Matthew xxiii. The introduction to his discourse, however, 
shows that he had no controversy with Scribes and Phar- 
isees as such, nor with what they taught as authoritative 
leaders of the people. They sat, as he said, in Moses' seat, 
and what they inculcated it was right to heed and do (Matt, 
xxiii, 2). Of the typical scribe, or man of letters, and what 
his capacities are if he has true insight, Jesus spoke in ad- 
miring terms (Matt, xiii, 52). He ate and associated freely 
with Pharisees who were sincere and candid with him (Luke 
vii, 36 ; xi, 37) ; and, as reported in the gospel of John, he 
imparted one of his profoundest doctrines to Nicodemus, an 
inquiring Pharisee and member of the Sanhedrim (John iii, 
1-15). His whole issue with these two leading classes was 
on the ground of their too prevalent sham and inconsistency; 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

not because they were Scribes and Pharisees but because, 
or in so far as, they were hypocrites. The Greek word 
hupokrites, in classical usage, means an actor, a stage- 
player. This meaning fits well with his denunciation of the 
Pharise'es. As accredited and responsible teachers it was 
their duty to live as they taught. Instead of that they were 
posing, acting a false part, appearing to be what they were 
not. The series of woes pronounced upon them showed 
up the various ways in which they were making display of 
sanctity and righteousness while inwardly turning their pro- 
fessions to their own selfish purposes. For such insincere 
practices Jesus, the consistent witness to truth, could not but 
have the most uncompromising antipathy. On the other hand, 
he acquired the popular (or invidious) fame of being a friend 
of publicans and sinners (Matt, xi, 19 ; cf. Luke xix, 7), 
largely, it would seem, because there was no question of 
insincerity or pretense between them. 

When once asked who was greatest in the kingdom of 
heaven he praised the truth and purity of childhood (Matt, 
xviii, 1-6) ; and in his beatitudes it was the pure, that is, 
the single of heart, who should see God (Matt, v, 8). The 
faith he sought was simply openness of heart and will to 
the truth of life as embodied in his words and personality. 
But with any form of crookedness or duplicity he had no 
patience or toleration. 

IV 

His Utterances in Divine Character. As we have seen,^ 
•for common hearers and ordinary occasions Jesus did not, 
assert his personality as divine. He used the term '' Son of 
Man " to designate himself, and even this for the most 
part indirectly, speaking of it in the third person as if of 
an ideal to be emulated and realized. At the same time 
he did not assume not to be divine or in any way to 

1 See above, pp. 535, 541 ff. 
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THE SON OF MAN 

disguise the more than human personaHty that was his. He 
simply spoke in character. The divine beauty and power 
of his personahty manifest themselves in the native dignity 
and greatness of his words. When he pronounced the for- 
giveness of sins, men recognized instinctively that he was 
exercising a divine prerogative, though he ascribed the au- 
thority to do so to the Son of Man (Mark ii, 7, 10). When 
he spoke habitually of his relations with his Father, the Jews 
were incensed against him because in their idea such inti- 
macy as he professed to have with God could only be between 
equals (John v, 18). His whole teaching and intercourse are 
pitched, so to speak, in this divine key. One of the most 
striking examples of this may be felt in the passage wherein 
he bids men come to him for comfort and rest and take his 
yoke upon them (Matt, xi, 25-30). Another example occurs 
in his lament over Jerusalem in Matthew xxiii, 37. How 
truly divine is the whole presupposition of these utterances 
we can realize when we reflect how inappropriate, not to say 
impossible, they would be in any other man's mouth. Yet in 
him they sound perfectly congruous and fitting ; his person- 
ality so fully bears them out. What would be insane assump- 
tion in an ordinary man is in him felt to be native and normal. 

Note. On this characteristic of Jesus' teaching and personality 
William E. Channing says : '' We feel that a new being, of a new order 
of mind, is taking a part in human affairs. There is a native tone of 
grandeur and authority in his teaching. ... He speaks in a natural, 
spontaneous style of accomplishing the most arduous and important 
change in human affairs. This unlabored manner of expressing great 
thoughts is particularly worthy of attention. You never hear from Jesus 
that swelling, pompous, ostentatious language which almost necessarily 
springs from an attempt to sustain a character above our powers. He 
talks of his glories as one to whom they were familiar, and of his inti- 
macy and oneness with God, as simply as a child speaks of his connec- 
tion with his parents. He speaks of saving and judging the world, of 
drawing all men to himself, and of giving everlasting life, as we speak 
of the ordinary powers which we exert. He makes no set harangues 
about the grandeur of his office and character. His consciousness of it 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

gives a hue to his whole language, breaks out in indirect, undesigned 
expressions, showing that it was the deepest and most familiar of his 
convictions." ^ 

The examples given above (and others might be named) 
are taken from one of the synoptic gospels ; and in gen- 
With whom eral the assumptions of divinity in those gos- 
Most Overt p^jg ^re indirect, not plainly assertive. This is 
quite consistent with Jesus' ordinary purpose to leave his 
divinity of nature to men's, recognition and personal dis- 
covery. It is in the fourth gospel, however, that most of 
his utterances in divine character are to be found and that 
these are most overt. Many of them are so directly self- 
assertive that they give his words, as therein reported, an 
essentially different style from that of the other gospels. 
This has roused much question whether in this gospel we 
have an authentic report of his actual words or an inven- 
tion, the result of later reflection and meditation. And 
doubtless a very individual style, the style of a peculiarly 
endowed writer, has been imparted to them. But to dejiy 
them, or some authentic nucleus of them, to Jesus is to go 
beyond the warrant. Jesus, as we know, was aware of his 
divine distinction ; so, indeed, were the evil spirits (cf . Mark i, , 
24). For the proper human audience and occasion it is alto- 
gether probable that he would give open expression to the 
holy working-consciousness which so naturally shaped his 
thoughts and actuated his deeds of power. 

To two classes of people Jesus' revelation of the divinity 
of his person was explicit, in terms of the Messiah or of 
the Son of God. 

I. One class was of those who were susceptible to such 
a spiritual recognition of him, and who could receive his 
claims with sympathy, loyalty, humility. Among such, out- 
side the circle of the disciples, were the woman of Samaria, 
to whom he explicitly announced himself as the Messiah 

^ Channing, Works (one-volume ed.), p. 305. 

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THE SON OF MAN 

(John iv, 26) ; and the man born Wind, to whom he revealed 
himself as the Son ot God (John ix, 35-37). These, how- 
To the Open- ^^^^> were easual instances, though we may be sure 
Minded and not SO accidental as they would seem. Among 
^^ ® the more intimate disciples also it is natural 

to suppose that some had more penetrative and intuitive 
minds to realize his divine nature than others ; and of these 
''the disciple whom Jesus loved," to whom is attributed 
the authorship of the fourth gospel (John xxi, 24), was pre- 
eminent. The words of deeper and more mystic import, in 
which Jesus speaks openly in the divine character, would 
find a special lodgment in his mind, and after due ripening 
of meditation would be brought forth from memory and 
reproduced. This is- what appears from the discourses of 
Jesus reported in the gospel of John. 

2. The other class was of those who, while by no means 
unsusceptible, were antagonistic to any claim to divinity on 
his part, or on the part of any man. Such were 
Self-Blinded Hiost of the Jewish leaders ; whom the writer of 
Leaders of ij^q fourth gospel represents as bitterly unwilling 
to respond to the divine when they saw it (John v, 
18 ; X, 33-38 ; xix, 7). To such, as responsible teachers of 
the people, Jesus would have a motive, if only to bear true 
witness, for declaring in clear and emphatic terms the deep 
significance of his personality. It was something essential 
for them to know, whether they would receive it or not 
(cf. Ezek. iii, 11). 

This is how the gospel of John represents him in his 
discourses given in Jerusalem ; for it is especially these 
which this gospel, differing thus from the others, reports 
(see John v; vii-x; xii, 12-50). Here at the capital he came 
into collision with the leaders of opinion and sentiment, 
whose duty it was to know and propagate the truth. He 
meets them as they are ready to stone him for what they 
deem blasphemy (John x, 30, 31) and, as it were, hurls at 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

them in most positive terms his divine relations and nature. 
If this is different from his manner in the synoptic gospels, 
we must note also the difference of audience, occasion, and- 
motive. He did not choose, amid such self-blinded opponents, 
to leave his divine personality uncertain or ambiguous. That 
belonged to his witness to the truth ; the rest lay with them. 



His Acts in Divine Character. The scientific temper of 
our age, with its disposition to reduce all things to the plane 
of ascertainable natural law, has made the question of the 
miracles of Jesus a very vexed and burning one. There is 
a widespread tendency, which even loyal Christians cannot 
well suppress, to adopt some explanation of them which will 
bring them to our natural unit of measure. This tendency 
takes mainly two forms : either to think that the miraculous 
element of Jesus' ministry came into the record as the result 
of childish wonder and credulity, which by the time the gos- 
pels were written had developed into an accepted tradition, 
or to limit his mighty works to such cases of suggestion and 
faith-healing as can be paralleled in modern times and to 
leave the rest to superstitious exaggeration. 

Neither explanation does justice to the account. As to 
authenticity, the miracles are as well attested as any part of 
Jesus' ministry ; are narrated in just as temperate and matter- 
of-fact style as the rest ; and are so intimately interwoven 
with his teaching and ordinary acts that the two elements, 
natural and supernatural, must stand or fall together. If the 
record of the miracles must go, there is no valid reason for 
calling anything historic. A like thing may be said about 
attempts to limit their kind or range. They cannot be con- 
fined .to cases in which we can trace the working of natural 
law, without losing their spiritual value. A larger and tran- 
scendent element escapes and baffles us ; a divine dignity 
and depth which will not consent to be so limited. 

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THE SON OF MAN 

We are not concerned here to call in question either the 
record or the reality of the miracles of Jesus. We take the 
As a Means ^^^^^^ ^^ it Stands. Our approach to it is literary ; 
of Self- and our consideration of the miracles deals with 

xpression ^j^gjj- essentially literary value. What do the 
miracles say, beyond what could be said otherwise .? 

In other words, we have to consider the miracles of Jesus 
as a means of self-expression. Given the character that he 
manifests himself to be, undeniably a character of majestic 
type ; given the plane of being on which he moves, undeni- 
ably higher than that of ordinary affairs ; are the miracles 
consistent and harmonious with these elements } They are, 
so to say, his means of personation, by which acts speak 
instead of words. Do they represent the person as he is .? 
Has their supernatural character the verisimilitude which 
makes for self-evidencing value .? It is a question not of lit- 
erary transmission or historicity but of literary consistency 
and truth to nature. And to answer it we must deal fairly 
with the personality of the Being who works them. If he 
is divine as well as human his manner of self-expression, 
act as well as word, will correspond. 

Considering the miracles in this light we may summarize 
the matter in two remarks. 

I. The miracles of Jesus, while far transcending the 
ordinary range of human experience, contain nothing of the 
magical or monstrous, and they are never without a justify- 
ing and illuminating motive. They are in idea the polar 
opposite to the works of occult art or vulgar marvel which 
with raw and materialistic minds pass for miracle. And 
they always contain an idea worthy of their power. They 
are works of beneficence and mercy and sympathy ; never 
wrought for display or self-glorification ; always embodying 
the double truth, of divine love and good-will on the one 
side, of the possibilities that inhere in human faith on the 
other. They tell a truth which men need to know, and 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

which could not be told so well in any other way. In this 
respect they are, like Jesus' words, a kind of literary vehicle, 
an acted symbol, bringing the touch of his personality more 
intimately into the lives of men. They are, as it were, 
his life put into expression beyond the reach of words, 
a deeper utterance of grace where sermon and parable fail. 
We can imagine to some extent what service they have done 
mankind by thinking how much poorer the world would be 
without the greatest and summarizing miracle of all, his 
resurrection from the dead. In that the meaning of his 
ministry culminated. 

Note. The contrast of Jesus' miracles as recorded in the gospels 
with the unmotived marvels of men's invention may be strikingly seen 
in the miracles of the Infancy of Christ which we find related in the so- 
called Apocryphal Gospels ; see, for example, the Gospel of Thomas and 
the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew. Of these an editor writes (Introd., p. xi) : 
" The single effect of placing [these writings] alongside the narratives 
of the genuine Gospels must be, as Dr. Westcott has said, to im- 
press the reader with the sense of ' complete contrast.' Time, place, 
propriety, even ordinary consistency, are recklessly disregarded." ^ 

2. The miracles of Jesus, wrought without effort and 
with no trace of that uncertainty which attaches to a hazard- 
ous or doubtful experiment (cf. by contrast Mark ix, 17, 18), 
are evidently as natural to him as are ordinary acts to us. 
We have seen that while he did not assume to be more than 
man, neither did he assume not to be. He simply spoke and 
lived in character ; and these miracles are the spontaneous 
acts of the divine, or rather the divine-human character. He 
does not dissociate them from the acts and powers of highest 
manhood. They are wrought, indeed, as showing the life- 
giving potencies of the Son of Man, true man, especially in 
the attitude of perfect faith. His own faith in the Father 
was so absolute that it had the effect of unquestioning certi- 
tude. Still, it was authentic faith, and he lived by faith just 

1 "New Testament Apocryphal Writings" (ed. Orr), pp. 21, 32. 

[564] 



THE SON OF MAN 

as he would teach other men to Hve ; and this faith created 
a fullness of personal force by virtue of which such works 
of mercy and love, great as the occasion demanded, were 
a natural way of living. 

Tennyson describes the self-expression of Jesus as : 

In loveliness of perfect deeds, 
More strong than all poetic thought.^ 

These perfect deeds he had no thought of monopolizing ; 
they were, in his teaching, just such deeds as perfect man 
could do, with his nature fully at one with the divine. And 
the spirit of such deeds, which is really all their value, was 
thenceforth to be with believers a dynamic to even greater 
works than he had shown to men (see John xiv, 12). 

Note. A tentative classification of his miracles, and the spiritual 
forces brought to expression therein, may here be given. They may be 
regarded under three heads : 

1. Miracles wherein his personality acted directly, by antipathy, on 
unseen spiritual forces (casting out demons). 

2. Miracles wherein his personality acted sympathetically on human 
disease and doom (healing and raising the dead). 

3. Miracles wherein his personality acted as a masterful divine and 
creative power (Nature miracles). 

None of these are less consistent with the presumable power of the 
Word made flesh than any other. They become more intelligible just 
in the proportion that Jesus himself does. 

III. Bearing Witness to the Truth 

We have noted ^ how reticent Jesus was about his claim to 
being Messiah and Son of God. He called himself rather 
Son of Man, teaching his followers in a quasi-theoretical 
way what such a Personage should be and do and holding 
the Messiah idea as it were in abeyance until they could get 
a just conception of it for themselves. We have seen ^ also 

1 See above, p. 527, note. ^ See above, pp. 535, 541. 

3 See above, pp. 551 ff. 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

how he dealt with the idea of the kingdom of heaven ; 
describing it in parables and figurative terms in order to 
wean men from their gross and external conceptions of it and 
make them accept it as a renovated inner life. All this mani- 
fests the supreme literary wisdom with which he met his 
generation's hopes and opinions and turned these in the way 
of sanity and tempered reason. 

In this self-disclosure and teaching he had spent about 
three years of his ministry ; until, as he knew, his time 
had nearly come. He had weathered the shallow popularity 
which his teaching and miracles first roused, and now the 
multitudes were in doubt about him (cf. Matt, xvi, 13, 14). 
He had trained a company of sincere disciples to familiarity 
with his principles of life : principles which, though now 
imperfectly comprehended, they would some day recall and 
understand. And now, as the end approached, all the 
simpler and humanitarian side of his Messiahship was in 
plain terms before the eyes of men. From the beginning 
of his ministry he had moved among the common people, 
accessible to all, living the sound, pure, just, and helpful life 
which fills out the idea and type of manhood. 

Signs of a tragic outcome, however, were thickening. 
The bigoted and fanatical among the Scribes and Pharisees 
had dogged him from place to place, seeking to convict him 
of blasphemy and heresy. His life was plotted against in 
Judea (John vii, i). For months he had been a virtual exile 
from Galilee, the domain of Herod Antipas, because Phari- 
sees and Herodians were conspiring against him there ^ 
(Mark iii, 6; cf. viii, 15). We find him and his disciples 
at length in the dominions of Herod Philip at Cassarea 
Philippi, in the extreme north of Palestine, whither he seems 
to have gone for seclusion. It was there that he predicted 
his death, and from there that he began his final progress 
through the land to Jerusalem. 

1 See Burkitt, " The Gospel History and its Transmission," pp. 95-97. 

[S66] 



THE SON OF MAN 

The history that follows may be regarded as the transi- 
tion of his ministry to a new phase, the final and culmi- 
nating one, wherein its deeper and ultimate meanings come 

to light. 

I 

The Great Confession and its Sequel. It was while he was 
far from his home province, in the only region where his 
life was safe, that Jesus received the first adequate recogni- 
tion of his personality. Students of his career call this the 
Great Confession. Peter, the spokesman of the disciples, 
made it, in the answer he gave to Jesus' question, '' But 
who say ye that I am ? " (Matt, xvi, 15, 16 ; Mark viii, 29 ; 
Luke ix, 20). Others had made a variety of guesses who 
he was, all more or less idle because not made with insight ; 
but the question had ceased to be acute, and curious and 
self-interested crowds had fallen away. The twelve disciples 
had remained ; partly, it would seem, from simple loyalty, 
and partly because his teachings had become a spiritual 
necessity to their otherwise poorly furnished minds (cf . John 
vi, 66-69). ^^^ their intercourse with him had been an in- 
valuable education, sounder and deeper than they were aware. 

And now, in a strange country, they were alone with him, 
having his company all to themselves. 

Peter's answer to Jesus' question gives voice to the human 
recognition which Jesus had all along sought to awaken. 
'' Thou art the Christ [the Messiah], the Son of the living 
God." This spontaneous confession marks the success of 
Jesus' aim thus far. So momentous does it signify to him 
that he attributes the ability to make it to a divinely given 
insight (Matt, xvi, 17). It is indeed a great height sur- 
mounted in Jesus' self -disclosure when those who have been 
most intimate wdth him, seeing his humility as well as his 
greatness, have risen to the sense, however dim, that the 
prophetic ideal of the ages is truly embodied in him. And 
this comes from the recognition of his intrinsic personality, 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

with no external glory or royalty to support his claims ; for, 
so far from having the estate of a king, he is a hunted man, 
virtually in exile. To recognize him in this condition- is to 
recognize him as he is. 

Though in this confession the disciples had reached the 
point where they could heartily accept Jesus as King of men 
How to Live and Son of God, their ideas of what is involved 
Up to It in suqJ^ royalty and sonship were vague and un- 
developed. As yet they had seen, for the most part, merely 
his human side, the side which by earthly standards they 
could comprehend. But there was a depth and reach of 
personality yet unrevealed, a stage of the ministry that had 
waited, so to say, for this access of recognition on the part 
of men. As Jesus himself expressed it, he had yet a baptism 
to be baptized with (Luke xii, 50) before he could inaugu- 
rate that world order wherein his followers would, as John 
had predicted, be baptized with the Holy Spirit and with 
fire (cf. Matt, iii, 11). 

This discovered fact of his Messiahship, however, is not 
at this stage a thing to be proclaimed (Luke ix, 21), but to 
be thought out and understood. Accordingly, taking the 
disciples as it were into counsel with him on the question 
what this Christ, or, as he still says, the Son of Man, must 
be and do, he affirms with great solemnity that for him 
Messiahship means rejection and death, followed by resurrec- 
tion. Such a doom for a true human life had already been 
foreseen by philosophers who had no idea of the uprise be- 
yond it. " The wisdom of Plato had already seen that one 
perfectly just could not appear amongst the senseless and 
the wicked without provoking a murderous hatred." For 
him the hatred was to come from the accredited leaders of 
the nation ; this was its anomaly. But Jesus' prediction was 
blind and repulsive teaching to the disciples, and was vehe- 
mently rebuked by Peter. His remonstrance with Jesus for 
presuming to predict such a fate, a remonstrance as vigorous 

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THE SON OF MAN 

as his confession had been, was countered by a reproof on 
Jestis' part as emphatic as had been his previous commen- 
dation (Matt, xvi, 22, 23). 

Following his solemn announcement of his coming suffer- 
ing and death, Jesus as solemnly enunciates the principle 
The Dis- ^^^^ ^^^ every disciple of his (in which number he 
cipies' Part includes not the twelve only but all who ever be- 
lieve in him, Mark viii, 34) the following of his 
way means self-denial and cross-bearing. '' If any one," he 
says, '' would come after me, let him deny himself, and take 
up his cross daily, and follow me " (Luke ix, 23). On a 
later occasion, as great multitudes followed him, he spoke 
still more emphatically, '' Whosoever doth not bear his own 
cross and come after me, cannot be my disciple," — accom- 
panying the statement by the "hard saying" about hating 
all one's relatives for his sake (Luke xiv, 25-27). To the 
earlier statement he adds the enigmatical saying, " For who- 
soever would save his life wdll lose it ; but whosoever shall 
lose his life for my sake, the same will save it " (Luke ix, 
24). Among the paradoxes and startling half-truths with 
which his teaching abounds,^ this was the most spiritually 
penetrative and the hardest to make men understand. We 
may call it the distinctive Christian principle, which is des- 
tined in the end to prevail. What he meant has become 
a commonplace of the Christian consciousness and spirit. 
However imperfectly men carry it out, or however the world 
scorns the practical application of it, no theme of literature 
and life is so honored to-day as self-sacrifice and the hero- 
ism of service. But such an ideal, though it touched the 
very heart of his reign, needed time and a new spirit of 
life for realization ; and Jesus reassuringly added that the 
kingdom of heaven would come with power ; that there 
were men standing there who would see it before they died 
(Matt, xvi, 28 ; Mark ix, i ; Luke ix, 27). 

1 See above, p. 546 f. 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

At this point in his ministry we note a change in the 
substance and tone of his teaching. He left the regiorf of 
starting to Caesarea Phihppi a few days (or perhaps weeks) ^ 
Carry it Out after the Great Confession ; and in the course 
of a somewhat leisurely and unobtrusive journey through 
Palestine from' north to south (cf . for Galilee, Mark ix, 30), 
a sort of farewell journey with Jerusalem as his objective, 
he, took occasion to impress on his disciples that this, his 
last journey, meant going to death and resurrection (Luke ix, 
51; ix, 44 ; Mark ix, 30-32 ; x, 32-34). It was their hardest 
lesson ; and for the time they were almost deaf to it, though 
the majesty of his mien, as thus he strode so resolutely 
toward his doom, amazed them. To the idea of the coming 
kingdom, however, they were quite keenly awake, and there 
was rivalry among them as to who should be greatest 
therein. James and John, indeed, who are thought to have 
been cousins of Jesus, preferred a definite request for high 
official appointment (Mark x, 35-37); but his response to 
their request, '' Can ye drink of the cup which I drink .? or 
be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized ? " 
(Mark x, 38), elicits their mistaken conception and em- 
phasizes anew the austere and soul-trying ordeal that awaits 
them. He is minded to foster no false hopes. Nor does he 
command them to follow him. He gives them the oppor- 
tunity rather, holding before them the risks and the sacri- 
fices; his appeal is always to men's choice and free will. It 
is with a kind of yearning wistfulness that he asks if they 
can share his cup and his baptism with him, submitting 
themselves thereby to lives of service (Mark x, 42-45). 
But from this time onward the severity and solemnity of 
the situation deepens, for he is preparing them for the deep 
things of the manhood life. . 

1 We have to reckon for the Transfiguration (see next section), which 
occurred six or eight days after (Luke ix, 28 ; Mark ix, 2) ; succeeding that, 
however, the start southward is indefinite. 

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THE SON OF MAN 



II 



Redkoning on Departure. The last six months of Jesus' 
ministry was a deliberate planning and preparation for the 
end. To designate this ending St. Luke, in his account 
of the Transfiguration, uses a peculiar word : he callS it 
decease or departure (Greek ten exodon, ' ' the exodus, the 
going out," Luke ix, 31) ; an idea which* included not only 
death but rising again and, to crown all, ascension — entrance 
upon a higher stage and table-land of being, from which 
divine position his ministry could be continued on a world 
scale and be victorious. That this was the idea in Jesus' 
mind is evident from what he said about being lifted up, 
both at the beginning and the end of his ministry. To a 
Pharisee, during his first visit to Jerusalem, he said the Son 
of Man must be lifted up, and he illustrated it by reference 
to Moses and the serpent in the wilderness (John iii, 14 ;' 
cf. Num. xxi, 8, 9). To certain Greeks who later inquired 
after him in Jerusalem, his remark, ''And I, if I be lifted 
up from the earth, will draw all men unto myself " (John 
xii, 32), meant crucifixion, but it meant a great deal more. 
It meant a death which was also a germination, like that of 
a grain of wheat buried in the ground ; this is the image he 
used to illustrate it (John xii, 24). All this, it will be noted, 
he took upon himself not as assuming the divine but as 
Son of Man, working out the true glory of manhood. 

A week after Peter had made his confession and Jesus 
had told the disciples what it involved and presaged, occurred 
The Great ^^^ ^^ ^^^ most mystcrious events of his ministry. 
Refusal and As with Peter, James, and John, his three most 

eso ve intimate companions, he was in prayer on a high • 

mountain, — probably Mount Hermon, near Csesarea Philippi, 
— suddenly, with a super-earthly light apparently from with- 
in his person, his face and figure so shone that his very 
garments Were dazzling white. Two men, also glorified, who 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

were identified as Moses and Elijah, appeared and talked 
with him. This strange episode is narrated by all three of 
the synoptists (Matt, xvii, i-8 ; Mark ix, 2-8 ; Luke ix, 28- 
36) ; and its essentials are recalled in a later epistle attrib- 
uted to one of the spectators (2 Peter i, 16-18). St. Luke 
aloTie reports the subject of their conversation. They spoke, 
he says, of his decease, his exodus, which he was about to 
accomplish at Jerusalem. »» 

These two men, it will be remembered, were the greatest 
personages of Old Testament history : the men in whom, 
respectively, the essential spirit of law and of prophecy were 
embodied. From Moses had been preserved a prediction 
of a prophet to come after him like himself, to whom men 
should hearken (Deut. xviii, 15 ; cf. Acts iii, 22; vii, 37); 
and Elijah, as the evangelists recall, was to be the herald 
of the Christ (Mai. iv, 5 ; cf. Matt, xi, '14 ; Mark ix, 1 1-13 ; 
Luke i, 17). And now these three, so intimately associated 
in prophecy and fulfillment, were together, discussing a new 
theme. Further, the other-world personages were two of the 
three men (the other was the patriarch Enoch, Gen. v, 24) 
who are represented to have been spared the universal fate 
of death, or, in the case of Moses, to have had an excep- 
tional departure from earth (Deut. xxxiv, 5, 6; 2 Kings ii, 
i-ii), -^a distinction seemingly due to their exceptional 
identification with God's work and will. If their release from 
mortality was a reward of such merit, then Jesus, whose 
meat, as he said, was to do the Father's will (cf. Johniv, 34), 
would certainly seem to have earned it, nay, to be even more 
truly than they worthy of exemption from death. And that 
he was all ready for such translation, the other-world splen- 
dor of his form and his intimacy with the great immortals 
seem to indicate. Translation to heaven, the ascension by 
which at the end he actually did depart (Acts i, 9-1 1), was 
his if he would take it ; he could be spared the preliminary 
shame and suffering and death and resurrection.' 

[572] 



THE SON OF MAN 

Here then occurs what we have called the great refusal 
and resolve. He chose to renounce this exceptional result 
of a sinless life ; chose to submit to the universal human 
lot, the doom which from earliest times had been deemed 
the wages and penalty of sin (cf. Gen. ii, 17 ; Rom. vi, 16, 
23). His motive in this his whole consistent career had re- 
vealed. As Son of Man he was. resolved to submit to all 
to which Man is subject, claiming no favors or exemption. 
A death so chosen, when he might have been spared it, was 
truly unique. It was doubtless a new thing to Moses and 
Elijah themselves ; and one of the spectators of this trans- 
figuration describes the sacrifice as something that prophets 
had speculated on and that angels had desired to look into 
(i Pet. i, 10-12). 

With this refusal and resolve made, the splendor faded. 
A cloud enveloped the company, and from it there came 
a voice, saying, '' This is my Son, my Chosen ; hear ye 
him" (Luke ix, 35). As the voice ceased the disciples saw 
only Jesus alone. He had made the resolve, it would seem, 
of his own will without reference to the Father's ; but the 
immediate approval from heaven evinced that his will and the 
Father's were entirely at one. His sense of perfect unity 
with the Father yet perfect freedom of choice and action 
on his own part he asserted later in Jerusalem. '' There- 
fore doth the Father love me," he said, '' because I lay down 
my life, that I may take it again. No one taketh it away 
from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have power to 
lay it down, and I have power to take it again " (John x, 
17, 18). 

In this episode at Mount Hermon Jesus had virtually 
laid down his life. There remained only the deepening 
details of making his resolve an actuality. But the disciples, 
naturally enough, could not understand it in this its initial 
stage. They were bidden keep silent about it until the 
Son of Man was risen (Matt, xvii, 9). It was the eventual 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

taking of his life again, the uprise from this earthly stage of 

being to a higher, that made its motive and purpose clear. 

For such a masterful departure from earth, with its avails 

for humanity, it is natural to suppose such planning and 

preparation would be made as would preserve 

The Miracle ^5 . - r ^^ - . . 

Piaunedand and perpetuate its meaning for all time and for 
Wrought in ^11 planes of spiritual insight. If resurrection is 
an available fact, it is of supreme importance that 
men should know its source, its power, its conditions. Such 
seems to have been the purpose that Jesus had in mind in 
his miracle of the raising of Lazarus, as narrated in John xi ; 
which event we anticipate a little in time in order to note 
its relation to Jesus' reckoning on departure. 

He had made one of the occasional visits to Jerusalem 
which the fourth gospel reports (John x, 22-24), and 
while there had spoken so plainly in divine character ^ that 
the Jews were on the point of stoning him for blasphemy 
(John X, 31). He escaped their hands, however, and with- 
drew to Bethany across the Jordan (John x, 40 ; cf. i, 28), 
where for some time he taught and won believers. While 
there word was sent him from Bethany near Jerusalem that 
his friend Lazarus of that village was sick. The household 
to which Lazarus belonged consisted of three, himself and 
his two sisters Martha and Mary ; and Jesus was intimate 
there, it being probably his home in his visits to Judea (see 
Luke X, 38-42). All were sincere believers of his teaching, 
and he loved them (John xi, 5). It was the sisters, Martha 
and Mary, who sent him word of their brother's illness. 

On receiving the word, however, instead of going at once 
to his friend's bedside, he remained two whole days where 
he was, making in the meantime such explanations as indi- 
cate that he was planning not a cure of illness but a restora- 
tion from the grave. The sickness, he said, was not unto 
death but for the glory of God and the glorification of the 

1 See above, pp. 561 f. 
[574] 



THE SON OF MAN 

Son of God (John xi, 4). Then, telHng his disciples plainly 
that Lazarus was dead, he started for Judea, and on arriving 
in Bethany found that Lazarus had been four days buried. 
A large company of friends of the family (for they were 
connected with leading families in Jerusalem) followed him 
as he went to the tomb ; and before calling Lazarus forth 
to life he uttered a public thanksgiving that he had already 
been heard- by the Father (John xi, 41-42). He had already 
assured Martha too of the power of risen life that resided 
inherently in him : ''I am the resurrection, and the life : 
he that believeth on me, though he die, yet shall he live ; 
and whosoever liveth and believeth on me shall never die ' ' 
(John xi, 25 ; cf. viii, 51). The tremendous miracle that he 
now wrought was just the proof, or, as the gospel of John 
would say, the sign, of this truth. It was one of the great- 
est of those ''acts in divine character"^ which told truths 
of supreme importance to men and yet not expressible 
otherwise ; truths which, left untold, would leave the race 
of men infinitely poorer. 

The immediate effect of this notable miracle was to pre- 
cipitate the action of the leaders and chief priests, who held 
g J ^ a council and, on the advice of Caiaphas the High 
the Act and Priest, decreed Jesus' death (John xi, 47-53). 
the Plan Until the final passover season, therefore, when 
his time was come to lay down his life, he tarried with 
the disciples in a place near the wilderness called Ephraim 
(John xi, 54). To the power of the life that was in him, 
therefore (cf . John i, 4), he had by this miracle borne witness, 
not before a few intimate disciples merely but before the 
leading classes and in a public way. As a consequence the 
common people were ready to acknowledge his Messiahship 
by popular acclaim (John xii, 12-15) ; but the leaders, coun- 
seled by the High Priest, fearing for the political security 
of their nation, decided that he must die (John xi, 47-52). 

1 See above, pp. 562 f. 
[575] 



GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

In reckoning on departure, however, Jesus, as we have 
seen, had in mind not only death but resurrection ; and this 
miracle at Bethany seems to have been planned in order to 
make resurrection a fact intelligible and available. His own 
uprise from death would show, indeed, the personal victory of 
his life over the bondage of death ; but it was not for him- 
self that he lived his life ; it was to be a light and power 
for men. By calling Lazarus back from the grave, to live 
henceforth in the memory and influence of that experience, 
he furnished a concrete object lesson of renewed life which 
should remain when he himself had gone to the Father, 
(cf. John xiv, 7). A man between whom and him was the 
tie of a reciprocal love would thus be a living witness to 
the power of life and the abolition of death (cf. 2 Tim. i, 10) 
inherent in such relation. , It was in this way, as he said, 
that the Son of God and the Father himself would be 
glorified (John xi, 4, 40). 

Note. On a careful study of data one is inclined to attribute a still 
broader plan in this miracle —^ a plan not only that he as Son of God 
should be glorified but that an adequate record of his divine claim should 
be made. This plan is concerned with the identification of the author 
of the fourth gospel, which we know is anonymous except as ascribed 
to " the disciple whom Jesus loved " (John xxi!» 24). 

If Lazarus, whom Jesus is repeatedly said to have loved, was the 
same as the disciple whom Jesus loved, we cannot well miss the 
suggestion that comes to light in this deliberately planned miracle : 
a suggestion of Jesus' far-seeing purpose similar to that in pursuance 
of which he trained the twelve to become apostles or representatives 
(cf . Luke vi, 1 3), and came later from his risen realm to make Saul of 
Tarsus a " chosen vessel " bearing the Christ-values to the Gentile 
world (Acts ix, 1 5). In other words, though he himself wrote nothing, 
yet this event seems to show that he planned to have the deepest and 
highest truths of his ministry adequately written. To present these 
truths in their inwardness a specially susceptible mind was necessary ; 
and the disciple whom Jesus loved evinces throughout the gospel the 
possession of such a mind.^ 

1 See below, pp. 641-644. 

[576] 



THE SON OF MAN 



III 



Rounding Off the Earthly Ministry. From the account 
of the miracle at Bethany, considered here as part of his 
preparation for departure, we return now to a somewhat 
earher period of Jesus' career, the period beginning after 
the Transfiguration. 

St. Luke's words, ''And it came to pass, when the days 
were well-nigh come that he should be received up, he stead- 
fastly set his face to go to Jerusalenj " (Luke ix, 51), give a 
just indication of the solemn and deliberate spirit in which 
Jesus ordered the last few months of his earthly ministry. 
By his frequent mention of the fact that Jesus was approach- 
ing the city of his martyrdom (Luke xvii, 1 1 ; xviii, 3 1 ; 
xix, II, 28), Luke shows his sense of the momentousness 
of the journey, which he narrates much more fully than do 
the other evangelists. It was a kind of farewell tour, begin- 
ning near Mount Hermon in the extreme north and pur- 
sued in a leisurely but wisely planned progress through the 
numerous districts of Galilee, Samaria, Perea, and Judea, 
where his earlier ministry had been or where he desired to 
effect lodgment of his truth before he was taken away. By 
this time he had the apostles quite well in training to assist 
him in his work of preaching and healing (Luke ix, i, 2) ; 
and an additional seventy were appointed to go forward and 
prepare for his entrance into the various cities and places 
(Luke X, i). This work of his was done in the feeling that 
time was short and that every word and deed must count 
for the most possible. " I have a baptism to be baptized 
with," he said, "and how am I straitened until it be accom- 
plished ! " (Luke xii, 50). This remark expresses his con- 
viction that even his beneficent work of help and healing, 
to which he was ordained and anointed,^ must needs rep- 
resent his mission in a cramped and limited way, until the 

1 See above, p. 540. 

[577] 



GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

supreme meaning is put to his life and his ministry reaches 
its sacrificial stage. 

His later teaching, accordingly, whether addressed to the 
disciples, to the multitudes, or to the upper classes, has a 
His Later kind of definitive note, as if it were the message 
Teaching ^jn^^t he would leave with them as most significant 
and final. To the disciples, who, quite ignoring his predic- 
tions of suffering and death, clung to the notion of a worldly 
kingdom, he taught lessons of humility and mutual service 
(for example. Matt, xviri) and of that readiness for the king- 
dom of heaven which consists in the wise employment of 
talents (Matt, xxv, 14-30), faithful and merciful stewardship 
(Matt, xxiv, 45-51), and the keeping of lamps filled and burn- 
ing (Matt, xxv, 1-13). To the general hearers he gave some 
of his tenderest and most searching parables, as if he would 
use every means to enlighten them. Such were the parables 
of the Lost Son (Luke xv, 1 1-32) ; of the Good Samaritan 
(Luke X, 29-37) ; of Dives and Lazarus (Luke xvi, 19-31) ; 
and of the Pharisee and the Publican (Luke xviii, 9-13). 
Some of his later parables, like .the story of the Unjust Judge 
(Luke xviii, 1-8), of the Unfaithful Steward (Luke xvi, 1-8), 
and of the Laborers in the Vineyard (Matt, xx, 1-16), are 
paradoxical in the audacity of their implications, yet all in 
the interest of a more robust faith. It is in these later 
utterances, too, that he denounces the besetting falseness 
and hypocrisy of the Scribes and Pharisees ; ^ and to these 
leaders of the nation he gives the parable of the Rejection 
of the King's Son (Luke xx, 9-18). All this is like setting 
his messages, as it were, in final order, as that on w^hich 
believers and unbelievers alike could permanently depend. 
The crown and culmination of these utterances, perhaps, 
is the tremendous picture he draws of the judgment that 
the Son of Man will pronounce at the end on all nations 
(Matt, xxv, 31-46). It portrays in simple terms the reversal 

■ 1 See above, pp. 554 f. 

[ 578 ] 



THE SON OF MAN 

of human judgment which comes with the spirit of Chris- 
tianity and makes it, in its gentle yet penetrative way, the 
most revolutionary power in the world. 

As Jesus enters upon the final week, which he spends 
in Jerusalem, Bethany, and the Mount of Olives, the inten- 
sity of his mood increases ; his words become more pro- 
phetic, more vehement, and more like those of a judge 
pronouncing doom. AvaiHng himself of a symbolic predic- 
tion in Zechariah (see Zech. ix, 9), — for both in relation 
to law and to prophecy he comes to fulfill, — he makes a 
dramatic entry into Jerusalem, riding upon an ass and with 
shouting multitudes accompanying (Matt, xxi, i-ii ; Mark 
xi, i-ii ; Luke xix, 28-40). As, coming over the crest of 
the hill from Bethany, he reaches the point on the Mount 
of Olives where the city comes into magnificent view, he 
pauses to weep over it and to prophesy its destruction, — 
one of his most moving utterances in divine character 
(Luke xix, 41-44). After some days of teaching and con- 
troversy in the Temple, as he has left it for the last time 
and is sitting on the hillside over against it, he gives almost 
as if casually his most notable prophetic discourse to his 
disciples.^ In response to their expressed admiration of its 
splendor and magnificence, he prophesies that the days are 
coming when not one stone of the Temple will be left upon 
another. This leads to predictions of great hardships and 
trials, of great opportunities also for wisdom and faith and 
steadfastness, of the end of the age with its apocalyptic 
signs, and of the eventual coming of the Son of Man to 
those who, like the fig tree when summer approaches, have 
put forth their wealth of faith and fruitfulness to meet him 
(Matt, xxiv ; Mark xiii ; Luke xxi, 5-36). It is Jesus' own 
contribution to apocalyptic literature ; in which images dic- 
tated by prophetic fantasy are replaced by spiritual values 
that all may realize and feel. 

^ See " The Presage in Jesus' Words," pp. 660 ff., below. 

[579] 



GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

The story of the close of Jesus' ministry is but the de- 
tailed account of his deliberate laying down of his life, his 
It is voluntary committal of himself to the hands of 

Finished j^g^ for their acceptance or rejection, until, re- 
gardless of its immediate result of apparent failure, his final 
word from the cross was, '' It is finished " (John xix, 30). 
It does not belong to the scope of our treatment to recount 
the last days of Jesus on earth. The story of them is told, 
with variations of order, fullness, and incident, but with little 
if any real discrepancy, by all four Evangelists. 

What suits our purpose is rather to note that although he 
let men do their will upon him (cf. Matt, xvii, 12), without 
resistance or evasion on his part (cf. Matt, xxvi, 53 ; Luke 
xxii, 53), it all came about in consistent pursuance of the 
ideal that he had formed from the beginning : the ideal of 
what is due to the integrity and perfecting of the true man- 
hood. Nothing short of the life he lived and the death he 
died — with all its accompaniment of divine power and 
wisdom and grace — could fully express its worth and 
potency. 

This ministry of Jesus came too in what an apostle has 
called '' the fullness of the time " (Gal. iv, 4), when, as it were, 
the stage of human nature was set and the properties ready. 
Jesus, with the sense of this age-preparation upon him, was 
acting consciously as the Protagonist in a great world trans- 
action, — as it were, a mighty dramatic action, in which the 
theme, wrought out by actual fullness of life, was the achieve- 
ment of manhood in perfect loyalty to its divine parentage 
and powers. This we may regard as the large literary aspect 
of his life among men. To live such a life was to be, 
whether recognized or not, not only man but the divinely 
anointed King of men. The best expression of this idea, 
perhaps, is Jesus' definition of his life's meaning and aim, 
as given to the Roman procurator Pontius Pilate, when he 
stood before that ruler a prisoner and self-confessed king : 

[580] 



THE SON OF MAN 

'' Thou sayest that I am a king. To this end have I been 
born, and to this end am I come into the world, that I should 
bear witness unto the truth " (John xviii, 37). The word 
"bear witness," martureo, is the word from which comes 
our word "martyr," — a term which his death and the death 
of many who lived in his faith have made forever sacred. 
His witness to the highest truth and beauty of manhood went 
on heroically and consistently until its end was martyrdom. 

For three days after his crucifixion the end seemed to 
all like ruin and failure. Jt was a time of suspense and 
Yet Only doubt, as if the promise of manhood and eternal 
Just Begun jjfg were falsified. Then an event occurred which, 
however we seek to make it realistic, changed the mood of 
the disciples from despair to bewildered awe and wonder, 
and later to a permanence of courage and beneficence and 
joy such as they had never experienced before. They 
went forth announcing to the world that he could not be 
holden of death (Acts ii, 24), but that in his continued life 
the power of death itself was conquered. The event of his 
life which was the first to be preached (Acts ii, 32) and the 
earliest to be recorded in writing (i Cor. xv, 3-8) was his 
resurrection from the dead. 

If Jesus' death on the cross was the sign that one stage 
of his active ministry was finished, the resurrection three 
days later was the signal of a new beginning. Henceforth 
the sahie ministry was to be perpetuated by the activities of 
men, living and working in the spirit of the Christ. St. Luke, 
going on from his gospel to write a continuation of history, 
is accurate in calling the former treatise as " concerning all 
that Jesus began both to do and to teach " (Acts i, i). The 
beginning implies continuation ; and in that continuation not 
only will new and greater works be done but new discoveries 
made in the facts and values of that' life which has proved 
itself the light of men. 

[581] 



CHAPTER X 

THE LITERATURE OF FACT 

[a. D. 30 onward] 

For Fact, well-trusted, reasons and persuades, 

Is gnomic, cutting, or ironical. 

Draws tears, or is a tocsin to arouse, — 

Can hold all figures of the orator 

In one plain sentence ; has her pauses too — 

Eloquent silence at the chasm abrupt 

Where knowledge ceases. — George Eliot 

AFTER the ascension of Jesus (Acts i), which left the 
l\. disciples with a new courage and hope, and after the 
wonderful illumination which they experienced at Pentecost 
(Acts ii), the little Christian community, still identified with 
Judaism and its associations, had no thought of making a 
literature, or even of needing any books except those of the 
Old Testament. Their first interests were active and prac- 
tical. They were concerned to make known the momentous 
new truth that had been revealed to them and to avail them- 
selves of its pow^r and promise. For centuries their nation 
had subsisted largely on a literature of prophetic strain ; had 
been looking for an ideal king and a golden age. And now 
that in the conviction of these disciples, henceforth called 
apostles, the era of fulfillment was come, the practical prob- 
lem was not to write or philosophize about it but to make it 
available to the largest extent possible and to naturalize its 
results in the world. 

In course of time, however, a literature must in the nature 
of things rise out of this Christian faith and activity. The 

[582] 



THE LITERATURE OF FACT 

primal materials for such a literature, in the form of oral 
address and teaching, were forthcoming at once. It was 
what the apostles went about proclaiming, in order to induce 
men to believe what they had seen and experienced. This 
oral utterance, to begin with, based itself on simple concrete 
fact. It was concerned with reporting what had actually 
taken place — events so unique and far-reaching that the wit- 
nesses of them could not keep silent. Peter's answer to the 
rulers who would forbid him gives the keynote of their initial 
motive : '' Whether it is right in the sight of God to hearken 
unto you rather than unto God, judge ye" ; for we cannot but 
speak the things which we saw and heard " (Acts iv, 19, 20). 
Such reporting of events and their meaning was the begin- 
ning of a literature. 

The tone of this literature is not philosophical nor exposi- 
tory. It is not conceived in the feeling of poetry or eloquence. 
It is simple announcement of fact and fulfillment. The 
general name it has received contains just this implication. 
It is called euaggelion (literally, ''good news "); from which 
comes the Saxon translation "gospel" (that is, "good spell" or 
" news "), a term adopted from the suggestion of the Second 
Isaiah, which Jesus used as a description of his own mission 
(Isa. xl, 9; Ixi, i; Luke iv, 18). "Good news," "good 
tidings," and "gospel" are synonymous terms. The men 
in the early church who, in distinction from apostles and 
prophets, had this duty of announcement specifically in charge 
were called Evangelists (Eph. iv, 11; Acts xxi, 8). 

I. The Apostles and their Initial Message 

" As the Father hath sent me, even so send I you " 
(John XX, 21), — in these simple words Christ commissioned 
his disciples after he was risen from the dead. Their work 
was to be, as nearly as they could do it, a reproduction, in 
spirit and kind, of his : a work of disseminating the truth of 

[583] 



GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

life as he had taught them to apprehend it. They imme- 
diately felt the pressure of this responsibility. From being 
disciples (that is, '' learners "), which was all they could be so 
long as he was with them, they assumed the function to 
which from the beginning he had destined them, and the 
name which by anticipation he had given them (Luke vi, 13). 
Henceforth they were apostles, that is, men "sent forth," 
namely, as representatives or ambassadors, with authority to 
represent to the world One who had proved himself Messiah, 
King of r^ien. 

Their first step after the ascension of Christ was to make 
good their original number, twelve, which had been broken 
The Apos- ^^^° ^y ^^^ defection of Judas. This they did by 
toiic choosing to fill his place a man named Matthias, 

^^^ taking care that he should be duly qualified for 

the responsible distinction. The simple qualification that 
they sought is worthy of note. It was that he should be one 
of the men ''that have companied with us all the time that 
the Lord Jesus went in and went out among us, beginning 
from the baptism of John, unto the day that he was received 
up from us. Of these must one become a witness with us of 
his resurrection" (Acts i, 21, 22). They made the choice 
not wholly in reliance on their own wisdom, but, selecting 
two candidates, cast lots between them, leaving the decision 
by prayer to their ascended Lord (Acts i, 23-26). 

This primitive organization — a college of twelve apostles 
— appears to have been merely provisional, having in view 
the object of proclaiming facts with which they had become 
familiar : the facts of a life and death which had had such a 
wonderful outcome of resurrection. The number twelve was 
maintained partly because it was the Lord's chosen number, 
but also — as they were Jews — with reference to the twelve 
tribes of Israel, now scattered abroad through the world 
(cf. Matt, xix, 28 ; James i, i). Of the subsequent history 
of most of these twelve little or nothing is known. Only 

[584] 



THE LITERATURE OF FACT 

Peter and John are mentioned for their activity in Jerusalem, 
and James the brother of John for his martyrdom, which 
occurred under Herod Agrippa (Acts xii, 2). These three 
were just the ones of the twelve who had been most intimate 
with Jesus, and to their care was left the initiation of the 
gospel announcement. 

As time went on, however, and the needs of manning 
their mission increased, the apostolic company seems to have 
been open to new additions. James the brother of Jesus, 
who had not been a disciple during the Lord's lifetime, 
became the head of the Jerusalem church, and is spoken of 
as an apostle (Gal. i, 19) ; and Paul, a converted Pharisee, 
became the most active and able of the apostles. The later 
requisite for apostleship seems to have been that the man 
should have seen the risen Lord (cf. i Cor. ix, i), and this 
was true both of James and Paul (for James, see i Cor. xv, 7). 
It is not unlikely, indeed, 'that the company of more than 
five hundred (i Cor. xv, 6) who saw him acquired a distinc- 
tion akin to apostolic because they could vouch for the fact 
that he had risen. 



Their Fitting Kind of Work. The apostles who after 
their Lord's departure were charged with the first promul- 
gation of the truth were rnen in the ordinary walks of life, 
rather than aristocrats or scholars ; in touch, therefore, with 
the mind and needs of common people, and thus in genuine 
sympathy with all, from the humblest up. For the work that 
first needed doing — telling a straight story of facts — such 
men were the best instruments. On the one hand, they 
had not become sophisticated with the refinements or preju- 
dices of academic learning. They had no inherited system 
of theology or ecclesiastical organization to maintain. On 
the other hand, they had been intimate companions of Jesus, 
learning his way from the beginning ; and this in itself was 

[585] 



GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

a liberal education. As for book learning, they had, like all 
earnest-minded Jews, a sound working knowledge of the Old 
Testament, such as their life-long conversance with syna- 
gogue instruction would impart ; which knowledge had of 
course been greatly enriched and clarified by their inter- 
course with the great Teacher. 

Notes, i . The Apostles'' Conversance with Scripture. Peter's inti- 
mate knowledge of Scripture may be seen from the fact that in his first 
discourse, in which he announces to the disciples the need of a new elec- 
tion to the apostolate (Acts i, 20), he quotes from Psa. Ixix and cix ; and 
in his great Pentecost discourse (Acts ii, 14-36) he quotes from Joel ii, 
28 ff. ; from Psa. xvi, 8 ff. ; and from Psa. ex, i . Peter and John in their 
thanksgiving (Acts iv, 25, 26) quote two verses of Psa. ii. Peter in his 
second great discourse (Acts iii, 1 2-26) quotes several passages from 
Genesis and Deuteronomy. Stephen's great discourse (Acts vii) is a 
masterly resume of Hebrew history from Abraham to Solomon, with 
extended quotations from Amos v and Isa. Ixvi (Acts vii, 42, 43, 49, 50). 

2. Bearing on Accuracy of Factual' Report. As to the fitness of these 
primitive apostles for reporting the words of Jesus, as these are later given 
in the gospels, A. C. Benson (" From a College Window," p. 346) says : 
" The words and sayings of Christ emerge from the narrative, though 
in places it seems as though they had been imperfectly apprehended, as 
containing and expressing thoughts quite outside the range of the minds 
that recorded them ; and thus possess an authenticity which is confirmed 
and proved by the immature mental grasp of those who compiled the 
records, in a way in which it could not have been proved if the com- 
pilers had been obviously men of mental acuteness and far-reaching 
philosophical grasp." 

Accordingly, both their native endowments and their 
acquired ability were at once perceived by the educated class 
who saw their efficiency. The same leaders who a few 
months before had inquired about Jesus, ''How knoweth 
this man letters, having never learned } " (John vii, 15) are 
the ones of whom it is now said, '' When they saw the bold- 
ness of Peter and John, and had perceived that they were 
unlearned {agrammatoi) and ignorant iidiotai) men, they 
marvelled ; and they took knowledge of them, that they had 

[586] 



THE LITERATURE OF FACT 

been with Jesus " (Acts iv, 1 3). The source of their remarkable 
assurance and power was evident. They were fitted in their 
degree, as the Master had been before them, to speak with 
authority and not as the scribes (cf. Matt, vii, 29). 

It will be noted, however, that they did not attempt to do 
anything for which their birth and training had not fitted 
Their Sense them. They were plain men of the people, — Gali- 
of Scope and leans, who had lived remote from centers of learn- 
ing, but in contact with everyday affairs. They 
did not set up as professional teachers or philosophers ; did 
not pose as prophets or sages ; did not attempt to demolish 
the prevailing moral and religious order of their day. They 
felt themselves rather in charge of a tremendous fact, of 
which their own experience was cognizant : fact which a 
plain man could tell as well as a learned one ; fact which 
could not remain inert, but opened out into vital meanings, 
fulfilling and clarifying the great hopes which their nation 
had cherished. The benefits of this fact they felt themselves 
authorized and obligated, as apostles of a living Lord and 
King, to make available to all who would accept it. 

Such a work produced its own fitting style of utterance. 
Not argument, not exposition, not elaborate description and 
narration. The tone and effect of their initial message was 
essentially preaching ; that is, announcement, proclamation, 
of what they had seen and heard, without theory, or elabo- 
ration, or speculation. In later years it was thus put by an 
Evangelist whose sense of it was peculiarly penetrative : 
'' That which we have heard, that which we have seen with 
our eyes, that which we beheld, and our hands handled, 
concerning the Word of life, ... that which we have seen 
and heard declare we unto you also, that ye also may have 
fellowship with us" (i John i, i, 3). They did not know 
the full secret of it at first ; but they could state a visible 
and audible fact. For such a work men of this sterling 
class, and with their unique preparation of experience, were 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

eminently qualified. Their lack of academic refinements 
and prepossessions was, indeed, an advantage. There was 
so much less to warp or obscure their vision, so much less 
blur on the mirror of their consciousness. 

II 

Four Phases of the First Apostolic Message. The main 
substance of these plain men's preaching may be given in 
four statements, which to them had the force of simple 
matter of fact. 

1. It begins with the culminating event of Jesus' earthly 
life : his resurrection from the dead. Their Master, who 
had so cruelly suffered death, was alive again ; they had 
seen him and had received his commission. This is pro- 
claimed as an actual and literal occurrence, a proved fact 
of human life. Their sense of its importance is seen in 
their choosing to repair their number one who, like them, 
could serve as a witness of his resurrection (Acts i, 22). 
They could vouch for the truth that, as Peter expressed it, 
it was not possible that Jesus should be holden of death 
(Acts ii, 24). This is the central announcement in all their 
preaching, — this, rather than the details of his works and 
words before resurrection. It was an event full of cheer 
and hope to those who had cast in their lot with him in 
earthly life — an event full of untold meaning for men. 

Along with this announcement, which naturally would 
bring dismay on those who had mistakenly put him to 
death, the apostles assured their nation that this error was 
not laid up against them (Acts iii, 17-20), but that all might 
avail themselves of his pardon and favor. Thus, to begin 
with, the apostles regarded themselves as witnesses to an 
event which in every sense and to every man was good 
news, — an evangel, a gospel. 

2. Nor was it merely of a past event that the apostles 
were witnesses and interpreters. They were eager also to 

[ 588 ] 



THE LITERATURE OF FACT 

explain a present power on men whose effects all could see. 
At the Pentecost season, some ten days after their Master's 
ascension, while the company of the apostles were together 
in Jerusalem, suddenly a strange new enthusiasm came upon 
them which quickened their faculties and gave them an in- 
sight and intensity of life like that of the ancient prophets 
(Acts ii, 1-4). This illumination and power, which they 
recognized as the presence of the Holy Spirit, they identi- 
fied also as the spirit of Christ bestowed upon them in pur- 
suance of his promise (Acts ii, 33 ; cf. i, 8) ; also as the 
fulfillment of a prediction made long before by the prophet 
Joel (Acts ii, 17-21). All this was to them the plain evi- 
dence of their Master's continued power and work on earth. 
He was still conducting his ministry, but on a larger scale 
and with more inward and vital effects. 

3 . All these surprising things — the return from death 
and the uprise of their Master, the access of illumination 
in them — opened their minds to what they had inherited 
from the past. These things were the fulfillment of prophe- 
cies that had long been familiar to them but had not been 
duly heeded. It had been difficult for Jesus while with 
them to convince them that he must die. Now it was per- 
fectly plain to them that not only he but the prophetic lit- 
erature had foreseen death and resurrection as essential ele- 
ments in the career of the Messiah (see Acts ii, 23 ; iii, 18 ; 
cf. Luke xxiv, 26). Thus the apostles became practical inter- 
preters, or rather identifiers, of prophecy, notably of things 
which till then had been neglected or disbelieved ; maintain- 
ing that the Messiah as foretold must pass through an 
experience essentially the same as the actual experience of 
Jesus of Nazareth. This of course was a necessary step in 
the work of getting Jesus accepted as Messiah by his own 
people. It identified him with men's already available fund 
of facts and ideas ; joined the Old Testament, so to say, 
with the nucleus and subject matter of the New. 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

4. Not only had the apostles the conviction that Jesus had 
fulfilled all the conditions of prophecy, — they had also the 
assurance of a new future not yet fulfilled or shaped. This 
assurance took the form of a firm belief that their Lord (for 
so they now called him), after a temporary sojourn in the 
heavens, would return to earth in person, and judge the world, 
and organize his kingdom as a visible realm (cf . Acts i, 1 1 ; 
iii, 21). It seems, indeed, to have been their idea, perhaps for 
many years, that he had not yet actually assumed his Messiah- 
ship but that he would do so on his return to earth ; and in 
the early years of the church the title by which he was known 
was not Messiah or Christ but simply Lord (see Rom. x, 9 ; 
I Cor. xii, 3 ; cf. John xiii, 13). While they were awaiting 
his return, which they deemed was due within that genera- 
tion (cf. Matt, xxiv, 33, 34), they were to submit to his 
lordship, acting as his representatives and preparing men 
to receive him worthily. He himself had predicted that he 
would sometime return in visible glory (cf. Matt, xxvi, 64) ; 
of that they were sure. But he had warned them against 
setting the time, which, indeed, the Master himself did not 
know (Acts i, 7 ; Matt, xxiv, 36), and which was nof arbi- 
trary with God but conditioned on the history of man. 

This prophecy of Christ's coming, or, as it was called, 
his parousia, or presence, was, like all prophecies, fore- 
shortened, and men could not realize except by actual ex- 
perience the immense growth and enlargement in manhood 
that must intervene. It was really the prophecy of an evolu- 
tion still in progress and still becoming more lucid and 
reasonable, which, however, to be received at all, must at 
first be apprehended in a concrete form corresponding to 
the concrete events they had seen (cf. Acts i, 11). Mean- 
while, the apostles' present duty was clear. They, and all 
whom they could induce to believe with them, had but to 
wait in hope, and cultivate the spirit of Christ, and be 
ready (cf. i Thess. v, i-ii). 

[590] 



THE LITERATURE OF FACT 

Thus in these four main topics of their new way of Hfe 
the primitive Christian community, taught by apostles, were 
put in possession of a working message which simple and 
plain men could handle. It was based not on theories nor 
on scholarship, but on such fact as all could apprehend 
and on such deductions from fact as were naturally sug- 
gested by the literature in which all were schooled. And 
out of it, as time went on, grew the substance of the gospel 
story, as we read it especially in the first three, the so-called 
synoptic, gospels. 

II. The Growth of the Synoptic Gospels 

The gospel — that is, a fund of fact announced and inter- 
preted as good news — is, as it must needs be, the rock-bed 
of all New Testament literature. No amount of religious 
philosophy or speculation can dispense with that. The facts 
of Christ's life, ministry, death, resurrection, ascension, must 
be made known to the world by those who personally observed 
them, in order to gain the world's belief and allegiance. 
The meaning of those facts can be left to men's growing 
intelligence and power to assimilate ; just as growth can be 
awaited from the planting and germination of a seed. 

Note. How the Apostles viewed it. The apostles insist on the 
distinction between fact and theory and on the literary vehicle proper 
to each. " The foolishness of preaching," that is, of depending on the 
announcement and demonstration of fact, St. Paul ironically calls the 
method he has found effectual for his purpose, and contrasts it, on 
the one hand, with doing miraculous things and, on the other, with 
wisdom, or philosophy, that is, the reasonings and speculations of men. 
This recognizes that the basis of his message was not logic but matter- 
of-fact, or, as he puts it, '' Jesus Christ, and him crucified " (see i Cor. i, 
18-25), — Ii^ ^ reminiscence of the most astonishing event of Jesus' 
life, hamely, his transfiguration, St. Peter, in the consciousness that 
truth is stranger than fiction, says, " We did not follow cunningly 
devised fables, when we made known unto you the power and presence 
i^parousian) of our Lord Jesus Christ " (2 Pet. i, 16). 

[591] 



GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 



The Germinating Time. But the mere statement of facts 
gives only information, not literature ; does not even tell the 
truth, but only furnishes materials out of which the living 
and ordered truth of the matter must be evolved. ^ And to 
realize the truth of things, in its order, relations, and pro- 
portions, takes time, — more time as the truth is more far- 
reaching and momentous. The minds alike of those who 
proclaim the truth and of those who receive it must grow 
and ripen ; must from a confused mass of incidents and 
sayings get a just idea of the bearings and relationships of 
things. So it was in the years succeeding Christ's earthly 
ministry. While the early apostles had charge, indeed, of a 
unique' fund of fact, both their own realization of the events 
of Jesus' ministry was too hazy and undigested, and the state 
of the infant church was too primitive, for the speedy devel- 
opment of a Christian literature. A literature is the result 
of a matured organic growth of thought and life. The men 
who were to teach the world such momentous things must 
outgrow their rudimental notions, correct their errors of 
realization and interpretation, discard their Jewish provin- 
cialism, and take the pace of the world's thought. And all 
this must be a slow, gradual process, working its results 
into shape in numerous communities of disciples and con- 
verts scattered through the provinces from Jerusalem to 
Rome, who were learning little by little what it was to be 
Christians. 

Accordingly, for the first generation of Christians the 
events and words of Christ's life were too uncoordinated in 
memory, and perhaps too constantly in process of accumula- 
tion, to be drawn up in permanent literary form. The apos- 
tles and many others were living who had seen and heard 

1 Cf. Wilson, " The Truth of the Matter," from " Mere Literature," 
pp. i6i f. 

[592] 



THE LITERATURE OF FACT 

him, and in their preaching they referred to his ministry 
famiharly as to well-known recent events. Less pains were 
taken also, probably, to preserve the facts in writing, because 
during all the first generation (cf. Mark xiii, 30) the belief 
was prevalent that Christ's second coming was near. There 
was felt to be little occasion, therefore, to make the life of 
One only temporarily absent the subject of a formal and 
finished history. 

As the survivors of Jesus' time began, however, to die off, 
and then as Jerusalem was destroyed (a.d. 70), breaking up 
The Changed the old order of things without a recognized 
Perspective Messianic order to replace it, the need was in- 
creasingly felt of a permanent record for the use of genera- 
tions to come. The immediate influence of the primal 
announcements — resurrection, spiritual outpouring, fulfill- 
ment, parousia — was somewhat dulled or, rather, diffused, 
and the church was settling down to a steady pace of growth 
and organization. For this state of things a literature more 
distinctive than that of the Old Testament, and more educa- 
tive than these simple matters of announcement, was needed. 
Besides, the facts of Jesus' ministry, as they accumulated, 
were standing out more clearly related and proportioned, as 
men viewed them more at a "distance of time. In a word, 
the times were getting ripe for the evolution of a new line 
of sacred literature. 

Note. Tennyson has described how the obscurity of present experi- 
ence passes into the clearness and realization due to a more distant 
view ("In Memoriam," xxiv) : 

Or that the past will always win 

A glory from its being far, 

And orb into the perfect star 
We saw not when we moved therein. 

Browning describes the same historic consciousness more at length, 
applying the need of it to this very time of gospel development 
(A Death in the Desert, 11. 235-243): 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

Just thus, ye needs must apprehend what truth 
I see, reduced to plain historic fact, 
Diminished into clearness, proved a point 
And far away : ye would withdraw your sense 
From out eternity, strain it upon time, 
Then stand before that fact, that Life and Death, 
Stay there at gaze, till it dispart, dispread, 
As though a star should open out, all sides. 
Grow the world on you, as it is my world. 

This is assumed to have been said by St. John, the supposed writer of 
the fourth gospel, just as, late in the first century, he was about to die. 

II 

Source-Gospels and Logia.^ Meanwhile, through the preach- 
ing of apostolic eyewitnesses, there were gradually accumu- 
lated stores of reminiscence, in which Jesus' words and acts 
were recounted from mouth to mouth, and circulated from 
one church to another, until a goodly body of such material 
was in general possession and used for teaching purposes. 
How such facts of Jesus' ministry would pass into common 
currency may be illustrated by a quotation made by St. Paul 
in one of his discourses (Acts xx, 35), in which he, though 
not an ear-witness, refers to a saying of Jesus, not elsewhere 
recorded, which evidently he and his hearers had obtained 
from common and well-known report. A store of such things 
was gradually accumulating (cf. i Tim. vi, 3 for recognition 
of these) and keeping alive in the thought of the Christian 
communities the mind of the Master. 

This material, by constant retelling, assumed a kind of 
stereotyped form, which favored the purity and carefulness 
of the tradition. One man's reminiscence would be corrected 
or tempered by another's, and the sense of its sacred im- 
port would deter the reverent disciples from taking liberties 
with it. Doubtless, too, this material was in various centers 
noted down in writing, and thus in a measure secured from 
fanciful additions and exaggerations. That there were such 

1 Cf. Hill, " Introduction to the Life of Christ," pp. 26 ff. 

[594] 



THE LITERATURE OF FACT 

written collections seems certain from the fact that the same 
event is told with variations in the different gospels, and yet 
with a general uniformity of phraseology which betokens a 
general base of supplies. There could not have been very 
many such collections in existence, however, before the 
gospels as we have them began to be compiled, else more 
traces of them would be found. 

Note. In' the preface to his gospel St. Luke speaks of narratives 
in such a way as to indicate that by his time gospel-making was quite 
vigorous. These were evidently so imperfect, however, that his own 
gospel and those of the other evangelists drove them out by the survival 
of the fittest. In Pick, " Paralipomena : Remains of Gospels and Say- 
ings of Christ," is a carefully compiled collection of fragments and scat- 
tered sayings from all the early sources that have been discovered. 

Of the supposable first-hand gospel sources, three main 
ones may be named which by tradition have been associated 
Personal with three of the immediate apostles. 
Sources ^ With the apostle Peter has been associated 

a plain and vigorous narrative, now identified with the Gos- 
pel of Mark, which Justin Martyr (cir. 100-165) calls the 
Memorabilia of Peter.^ Its connection with Peter is not 
absolutely proved, though very possible and natural. From 
the fact that the events of the last week are more full and 
vivid than the rest, it seems certain that the writer was a 
resident of Jerusalem and an eyewitness who, as it would 
seem, added material of his own to what he had heard from 
St. Peter. One uncoordinated incident (Mark xiv, 51, 52) 
seems quite motiveless unless it happened to the narrator 
himself, who, if this is so, was then a young man. This 
may well have been John Mark, who afterward was an atten- 
dant of the apostles (Acts xii, 25 ; xv, 37, 39), whom Peter 
calls '' his son " (i Pet. v, 13), and in whose mother's house 
the early Christians used to gather (Acts xii, 12). The asso- 
ciation of this gospel with Peter is thus very probable. 

1 See Burkitt, " Earliest Sources for the Life of Jesus," p. 84. 

[595] 



GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

2. With the apostle Matthew, on much less definite 
grounds, is associated a body of so-called logia, or sayings 
of Jesus, written first in Aramaic. These, however, may 
have been mere fugitive notes of Jesus' discourses, and per- 
haps of the coincidences between events of Jesus' life and 
prophecy, such as are numerous in Matthew's gospel. It is 
Papias who attributes such a body of sayings to the publican 
disciple Matthew, biit the original document is hopelessly 
lost, and it cannot be determined what it contained. With 
the compiling of finished gospels it would naturally disappear. 

3. With the apostle John is associated the fourth gospel ; 
this because he is identified with ''the disciple whom Jesus 
loved," who, according to the testimonial appended to the 
gospel, '' is the disciple that beareth witness of these things, 
and wrote these things " (John xxi, 24). Neither is this dis- 
ciple's name given, nor is John's name mentioned in the 
gospel ; and it is only by tradition that John's name is asso- 
ciated with the composition of it. What is of more impor- 
tance, however, is the fact that if written by the disciple in 
question the gospel is an eyewitness source. The first-hand 
material that it contains, however, has in the course of many 
years (for the gospel was at all events written near the end 
of the century), with the change due to time and ripened 
meditation, assumed a character very different from that of 
the other gospels. This has caused scholars to consider it in 
a class by itself, apart from the synoptics. It will come up for 
later consideration, as belonging to the Literature of Values.^ 

Besides the accounts traceable to the apostles .themselves, 
it is not unlikely that single episodes or discourses of Jesus' 
ministry may have circulated in detached documents,^ and 
afterwards have been incorporated in the completed gospels. 
His discourse on the Last Times, Mark xiii and Matthew 
xxiv, which would have special significance for its bearing 

1 See "The Story Told Once More," pp. 645-651, below. 

^ See Burkitt, " The Gospel History and its Transmission," pp. 62, 127. 

[596] 



THE LITERATURE OF FACT 

on the parousia, would be a likely case in point. The story 
of the woman taken in adultery (John viii, i-ii), which is 
lacking in many ancient manuscripts and yet has on it 
the hall-mark of authenticity, may be another example. Nor 
will it do to ignore the numerous reminiscences of unnamed 
persons which must have been forthcoming when our gos- 
pels began to be compiled ; much as stories of the life of 
Lincoln are collected nowadays. It will be noted that about 
the same time has elapsed since Lincoln's death as had then 
elapsed since the crucifixion, and we can think how easy it 
was to verify or correct, for permanent record, stories that 
had acquired a more or less stereotyped form by oral re- 
counting. St. Luke intimates in his preface (Luke i, 2) that 
some of his information came from individual sources. His 
account of the birth of John the Baptist and of the birth 
and infancy of Jesus (Luke i and ii), if not pure invention, 
must have been of this private sort. 

Of the three synoptic gospels as we have them, Mark, 
which was the earliest written, may be regarded as also a 
Summary of sourcc-gospel, the Only one that has come down 
Apparent to US intact. It is made the basis of their com- 
piled gospels by the authors both of Matthew 
and of Luke ; in fact, the substance of almost every verse of 
Mark may be found in one or both of them. It furnished 
the biographical and chronological backbone for the compos- 
ite gospel narrative — a groundwork of plan from which the 
others may at times digress, but to which they return. 

Besides this primitive gospel, the authors of Matthew and 
Luke drew from another source, which the critics call Q (for 
the German Quelle, " source "), especially for the discourses 
of Jesus. This may be the source that Papias meant when 
he spoke of the logia, or sayings of Matthew, but there is 
no certainty. 

In addition to these, Luke had certain unknown sources 
of his own, both for the infancy and early years and for 

[597] 



GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

the latter part of the ministry. From these unknown sources 
he has drawn some of the most significant parables, like 
that of the Lost Son, of the Good Samaritan, of Dives and 
Lazarus, and of the Pharisee and the Publican. Already, 
when he begins to write, he says that '' many have taken 
in hand to draw up a narrative"; which implies that he 
had much material to sift and adjust to his purpose. 

Ill 

The Synoptic Gospels as Completed. Beginning with the 
earliest written, the Gospel of Mark, we find in the succes- 
sive gospels a kind of gradation. From a literature of pure 
fact or reportage, such as would come from a plain and 
forthright mind like that of Peter, through rising degrees 
of a growing sense for values, we find in the other gospels 
a tendency to add coloring and interpretative elements. This 
corresponds to the growing consciousness on the part of the 
Christian communities, as time went on, of deeper meanings 
in Christ's personality and ministry, and the desire to coordi- 
nate these meanings with the known values of Hfe. The 
same spiritual desire and growth have continued until this 
day, and will always continue ; creating in a true sense an 
unending Bible, as each new generation sees things in new 
lights and applications. The gospels embody but the first 
stage and tendency, the stage suited to the development of 
a New Testament canon ; and in this stage, even in the case 
of the latest gospel, that of John, these reports of Jesus' life 
and words remain essentially a literature of fact. 

This gospel answers not unfitly to what we should naturally 
expect if we assumed it to have come, as tradition says, from 
1. The Gospel the preaching of Peter. One of his reported dis- 
of Mark courses in the Book of Acts, indeed, contains a 
kind of epitome of this whole gospel in a few verses. Peter 
himself was an apostolic preacher and leader, not a man of 

[598] 



THE LITERATURE OF FACT 

letters. But it is reasonable to suppose that John Mark, 
whose intimacy with the apostles we have seen, was the 
compiler and writer; not a mere amanuensis, but himself 
to some extent, especially during the last days in Jerusalem, 
an eyewitness. 

Note. Peter's discourse, Acts x, 34-43, was given to the centurion 
Cornelius and his household, being the first address Peter gave to a 
Gentile audience. This epitome of his gospel message is here given 
from '' The Corrected English New Testament " : 

" The message which he (God) sent to the children of Israel, preach- 
ing good tidings of peace through Jesus Christ — he is Lord of all — even 
that word, as ye yourselves know, was published throughout all Judea, 
beginning with Galilee — after the baptism which John preached — con- 
cerning Jesus of Nazareth : how God anointed him with the Holy Spirit 
and with power, and how he went about doing good, and healing all who 
were oppressed by the devil ; for God was with him. And we are wit- 
nesses of all things which, both in the country of the Jews and in Jeru- 
salem, he did ; whom also they slew, hanging him on a tree. Him God 
raised on the third day ; and showed him openly, not to all the people, 
but to witnesses chosen before by God, even to us, who ate and drank 
with him after he had risen from the dead. And he commanded us to 
preach to the people, and to testify that this is he who was appointed by 
God to be the judge of living and dead. To him all the prophets give 
witness that, through his name, whosoever believeth on him shall receive 
forgiveness of sins." 

The purpose of the book is simple and direct. Beginning 
not at the birth of Jesus, as a biography would, but at the 
preaching of John the Baptist when Jesus entered upon his 
ministry, its aim is to set forth '' the gospel of Jesus Christ, 
the Son of God " (Mark i, i). Designed for Roman readers, 
to whom the idea of the Son of God with its connotation 
of dignity and power would be natural and congenial,^ the 
gospel concerns itself with a plain narration of the things 
Jesus did during his ministry — works which, without assert- 
ing divinity, yet evince the tremendous power inherent in One 
who acts in divine character. Of his teaching the gospel has 

1 Cf. the words of Roman centurions, Luke vii, 6-8 ; Mark xv, 39. 

[599] 



GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

not so full and systematic reports as have the others, nor is 
it concerned to compare his life minutely with prophetic pre- 
diction. It simply recounts, in a matter-of-fact way, what he 
did and the words immediately connected therewith, as ''he 
went about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed 
of the devil." 

The story is told with simple directness and vigor, and 
with many such touches as only an eyewitness would give. 
Of all the synoptic gospels this gives most the impression 
of first-hand contact with the uncolored facts of Jesus' life. 
As a source-gospel it furnished, as has already been noted, 
the framework of order and sequence on which all the 
accounts of the ministry are based. 

As the Gospel of Mark views Jesus as the Son of God, 
the Gospel of Matthew presents him no less distinctly as the 
2. The Gospel Messiah, the Coming One foretold by the prophets 
of Matthew ^j^^j expected as the King of Israel. The portrayal 
of him in that light w^ould of course be designed primarily 
for Christians of Jewish antecedents. The theme that seems 
to have been in the writer's mind may be expressed as : The 
Messianic King and the Beginnings of his Reign. 

The gospel accordingly begins with a genealogy (Matt, i, 
1-17) giving Jesus' descent from David and Abraham ; and 
the stories of his infancy narrate the royal homage paid him 
by Eastern Magi, and the rivalry of which King Herod 
was suspicious and jealous and which he sought to suppress 
by the child's death (Matt. ii). After Jesus' baptism, where 
John the Baptist was conscious of his majesty (Matt, iii, 14), 
his ordeal of temptation determined the manner of his king- 
dom as contrasted with the kingdoms of the earth (iv, i-ii). 
So throughout the gospel the subject matter is keyed to the 
note of royalty. Jesus is the Messiah, King of men, and his 
words are concerned with the principles of his kingdom, the 
kingdom of heaven. 

[600] 



THE LITERATURE OF FACT 

This gospel, more didactic than Mark, concerns itself 
more with the teachings of Jesus than- with the historic 
sequence of his ministry ; which teachings it gathers into 
groups forming several somewhat extended discourses, with 
enough narrative material between to give them a natural 
setting and coordination. The most important of these dis- 
courses is the so-called Sermon on the Mount (chaps, v-vii), 
which, though its sections may have been given at different 
times, is so related as to embody a kind of charter or mani- 
festo of the kingdom of heaven and to reveal the relation 
of this new charter to the old law. 

Note. On the theory that the discourses of Jesus form the main 
scheme of Matthew's gospel, while the incidents are connective and 
ancillary, the gospel may be regarded as having for substance five didactic 
groups or discourses : 

1 . The charter or principle of the kingdom, chaps, v-vii. 

2. The charge to tlje apostles who have the kingdom to maintain, 
chap. X. 

3. The definition of the kingdom in parabolic teaching, chap. xiii. 

4. The internal relations of the kingdom and its spirit, chap, xviii. 

5. The culmination of the kingdom and the eternal test of citizenship 
therein, chaps, xxiv, xxv. 

Another striking characteristic of this gospel is its frequent 
citation of- Old Testament prophecies. These citations differ 
much in didactic value. Some of them betoken a large and 
liberal sense of prophetic meaning and scope (for example, 
ii, 6 ; iv, 15 ; xii, 18-21) ; others are more far-fetched, as if 
the fulfillment of prophecy meant verifying coincidences of 
prediction and event (for example, ii, 18, 23). A kind of mid- 
dle sense of values may be seen in i, 23 ; xxi, 5 . This variety, 
whether so intended or not, has the effect of finding and 
satisfying different grades of mind, — the unlearned and 
literal as well as the scholarly and poetic. To all classes 
the writer would certainly show that Jesus was indeed the 
Messianic king who, though so different from anticipation, yet 
fulfilled all reasonable expectations and gave them reality. 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

Luke, who was the author both of this gospel and of the 
Acts of the Apostles, seems to have designed the two as 

The continuous with, each other. In the preface to 

Gospel of the Acts (Acts i, 1-5) he speaks of the gospel 
" ^ as a '' treatise . . . concerning all that Jesus began 

both to do and to teach, until the day in which he was received 
up." The two histories, then, he regarded as two stages 
in an essentially continuous ministry; namely, first, as con- 
ducted personally in the body and, secondly, as conducted 
through the apostles by his directing and supporting spirit. 

If the first two gospels are concerned with the divine 
aspects of Jesus' personality, as Son of God (Mark) and 
as Messiah (Matthew), Luke may be called more distinc- 
tively the Gospel of the Son of Man. It is especially in 
Jesus' sweet and strong humanity, his helpful fellowship 
with all, that Luke regards him. The Lukan accounts of 
the infancy and childhood portray him as a very human 
child, yet filled with wisdom and piety ; and his descent is 
traced back not to David or Abraham but to Adam, the 
father of humanity. It is Luke, as we have noted, who 
narrates how Jesus took upon himself the ministry of heal- 
ing and emancipation prophesied in the Second Isaiah 
(Luke iv, 16-22). His gospel preserves for us also many 
instances of Jesus' .kindness and good will not to the Jewish 
nation alone or to disciples but to man as man. He is 
indeed the friend of publicans and sinners and risks odium 
thereby (cf. xv, i, 2 ; xix, 7) ; yet while in his parable he 
satirizes the self-righteousness of the Pharisee (xviii, 9-13), 
he does not hesitate to eat with Pharisees, even while in 
their presence he accepts the homage of an outcast woman. 
The parables of the Lost Son (xv, 11-32) and of the Good 
Samaritan (x, 30-35), both peculiar to Luke, give a fair key- 
note of the broad humanity of the gospel ; such a spirit as 
would become one who, himself a Gentile Christian, was an 
intimate companion of Paul, the great apostle to the Gentiles. 

[ 602 ] 



THE LITERATURE OF FACT 

Luke writes more like a historian than, do the other Evan- 
gehsts : giving the narrative not in mere annalistic sequence 
Hke Mark, nor in didactic order like Matthew, but with the 
causes and motives that give the events a historic relation 
and coherence. He is also the master of a more finished 
literary style. As he himself was not an eyewitness of any 
of Jesus' life, nor a native of Palestine, he shows a certain 
detachment from the inherited ideas and prejudices of the 
Jews, which qualifies him alii the better to weigh and verify 
his historical material and put it in a form that readers of 
all nations can appropriate. 

Note. The fourth gospel, the profoundest account of Jesus' person- 
ality and work, comes up more fitly, perhaps, in the next chapter, The 
Literature of Values (see p. 645). This, not because it is untrue to fact, 
or to eyewitness testimony, but because it was written at a time so much 
later that the facts of Jesus' personality had come to be understood in 
their larger and divine values. It is written, in other words, not with 
a merely historical but with a predominantly interpretative purpose 
(see John xx, 31). 

It was late in the first century before the narrative gos- 
pels, as completed, becarne the literary basis for the educa- 
During the tion of the growing church. We are to note. 
Transition howevcr, that it was not because the facts of Jesus' 
life were remote or had not come to light that the syste- 
matic record of them was so long delayed. The exact 
opposite is closer to the truth. It was because they were 
so near, because they were a present luminous reality instead 
of a past and fading history, that the century waited so long 
for a written gospel. Meanwhile, through the companion- 
ship and instruction of apostles who had seen and heard, 
through apostolic letters sent to the churches and circulated 
from community to community, and through the felt impul- 
sion and power of the spirit of Christ, the faith of the early 
Christians was kept living and operative, forming an ecclesia, 
a body of believers with common motives and ideals separate 

[603] 



GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

from the world. It is to the record of this body, and the 
movement of its activities while waiting for the completed 
literature of fact, that we now turn. 

III. The Acts of the Apostles 

As we see by comparing the preface to the Gospel of 
Luke with that to the Acts of the Apostles, the same per- 
son who wrote the gospel wrote also the other account, ad- 
dressing both to a certain Theopliilus (Luke i, 3 ; Acts i, i), 
who was undoubtedly a Gentile Christian. In writing the 
Acts he had the advantage, for parts of it, of being an eye- 
witness, having been a companion of St. Paul on some of 
the latter's missionary journeys, — a fact indicated by his 
use of the first person in narrating the incidents at which 
he was present.. For the parts of the history not relating 
to St. Paul he had to depend, as in the compilation of his 
gospel, on the written and oral reports of other persons. 
The history is brought down to the time of St. Paul's first 
imprisonment at Rome, but whether written before or after 
the apostle's death is uncertain. 



As Continuation of a Prior History. The Acts of the 
Apostles, written by Luke, is a history projected as a 
continuation of his gospel to give an account of Christ's 
work through authorized representatives, as these witnessed 
to him and proclaimed his truth from Jerusalem to Rome. 
The two books give, then, in one connected view an 
account of the Christian movement from the birth of Jesus 
to the introduction of his teachings in the capital of the 
world. PVom there the movement could be trusted to radi- 
ate and grow until the whole earth responded to its influence. 

Luke's warrant for presenting his history in this form and 
compass is intimated in Christ's charge to his apostles just 
before his ascension. "It is not for you," he said, ''to 

[604] 



THE LITERATURE OF FACT 

know times or seasons, which the Father hath set within his 
own authority. But ye shall receive power, when the Holy 
Spirit is come upon you ; and ye shall be my witnesses both 
in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and unto the 
uttermost part of the earth " (Acts i, 7, 8). They had sup- 
posed that he would speedily set up his kingdom through 
the supernatural power which his resurrection had conferred 
(cf. Acts i, 6). Instead of encouraging that hope, however, 
he directed them to institute a movement of teaching and 
preaching similiar to what his had been, without reference 
to time and with no limitation of territory, leaving his return 
to take care of itself. Then in their sight he ascended, and 
angels, appearing, predicted his return (i, 9-1 1). 

By the time Luke wrote his history of these apostles! 
acts the true state of the case was clear. They were the 
initiators of a movement, continuous with Jesus' work, which 
was destined to be world-wide and indefinitely enduring, a 
movement taking its place among the supremely great forces 
of history. Luke, from his historical instinct, saw this, and 
recounted its initial and determinative stages in the Acts of 

the Apostles. 

II. 

As Related to the Planting of Christianity. The history 
comprised in the Acts of the Apostles falls into two well- 
marked divisions or stages. 

I . For twelve chapters the history is given as it relates to 
the initial steps in the work of disseminating the gospel. It 
tells of the Pentecostal revival in Jerusalem ; of the organi- 
zation of systematic ministry under Peter and John as leaders ; 
of the appointment of deacons or helpers, among whom were 
Stephen the first martyr and Philip the first itinerant evan- 
gelist ; of the rise of a persecution which scattered the first 
group of workers and enlarged the sphere of their ministry ; 
of the conversion of Saul, the chief persecutor ; of the begin- 
ning of work with Gentiles by the divinely directed agency 

[6°S] 



GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

of Peter — until a vigorous center of work both with Jews 
and Gentiles was established at Antioch in northern Syria. 
All this time the new work was regarded, and regarded 
itself, as the culmination and fulfillment of Judaism. The 
faith was called "The Way" (Acts ix, 2 ; xix, 9, 23 ; xxii, 
4 ; xxiv, 14, 22 ; cf. John xiv, 6), a name apparently orig- 
inated by St. Paul and his circle. In Antioch, however, 
where the larger significance of the movement began to be 
perceived through the teaching of Barnabas, the disciples 
got the name of Christians (see Acts xi, 26), — a nickname 
at first, perhaps, but accepted, like the modern name 
'' Methodists," and made forever honorable. 

2. The second half of the book, chapters' xiii to xxviii, is 
devoted mainly to the work of St. Paul, as he made several 
extended missionary journeys, working with extraordinary 
energy and encountering untold hardships (cf. 2 Cor. xi, 
22-33) ill his evangelizing zeal, which was as great for 
Christianity as his enthusiasm had formerly been for Phari- 
saic Judaism. In these journeys he visited the chief centers 
of influence and culture in Asia Minor, Macedonia, and 
Greece, planting churches at such strategical points as 
Thessalonica, Corinth, Ephesus, Philippi, and witnessing 
not without result in the center of culture, Athens ; until, 
after being arrested on a return to Jerusalem and appealing 
his case to Cassar, he was brought as a state prisoner to 
Rome, the world's capital. 

In chapter xvi, 10, without warning or explanation, the 
writer begins to speak in the first person (^ we endeavored," 
etc.), and for much of the remaining history this manner of 
narration is kept up, showing that Luke became Paul's 
companion (probably at Troas) and was thus not only an 
eyewitness of many events in Paul's career but in a posi- 
tion to learn many earlier facts at first hand. That he was 
a faithful and congenial friend of Paul is indicated in Paul's 
epistles, where he is designated as '' the beloved physician " 

[606] 



THE LITERATURE OF FACT 

(Col. iv, 14), and where he is mentioned as Paul's only com- 
panion in the latter 's final imprisonment (2 Tim. iv, 11). 

Thus in these two books, the Gospel of Luke and the 
Acts, we have the continuous story of Christian times, 
from the birth of Jesus until the closing years of the 
greatest apostle, as told by one man, a faithful and compe- 
tent historian. 



[607] 



CHAPTER XI 

THE LITERATURE OF VALUES 
[Cir. A.D. 47 to cir. loo] 

OUR distinction in this chapter and the preceding be- 
tween the Uterature of fact and the Hterature of values 
is not meant as a hard and fast discrimination. It names 
rather the general design and trend of the Gospels and the 
Acts on the one hand, and of the remaining literature, 
mainly in epistolary form, on the other. The predominant 
object, in the one case, is to give information of things not 
befgre generally known, and, in the other case, to give the 
meanings of things already received and familiar. 

But the two kinds of literary purpose continually meet 
and blend. The gospels, designed for all sorts and condi- 
tions of rrien, must not only narrate the facts of Jesus' life 
but must give them in such order, emphasis, and proportion 
as to reveal their values in the sum of life and truth. The 
epistles, designed for the communities of Christians who 
already know and accept the central Personality, not only 
give its values for Christian faith and doctrine but keep 
constantly in the foreground the basis of fact. This is well 
expressed by one of the apostolic writers in one of his letters. 
" We did not follow cunningly devised fables," he says, 
"when we made known to you the power and presence 
of our Lord Jesus Christ ; but we were eyewitnesses of his 
majesty'.' (2 Pet. i, 16). Thus the Christian writers' sense 
of the values of which they were in charge was not that 
of something speculative, like a philosophy, or of some- 
thing invented, like a work of fiction, but of the simple 

[ 608 ] 



THE LITERATURE OF VALUES 

application of facts to life, — facts both of history and of 
personal experience (cf. Acts v, 32). 

Main Lines of Values. In three main lines the literary 
and spiritual' values set forth in the epistolary paft of the 
New Testament may be summarized. They relate them- 
selves to past, present, and future ; or as a New Testament 
writer, sensible of the fact that the whole order of values 
centers in one divine Person, expresses it : " Jesus Christ 
the same yesterday and to-day and for ever" (Heb. xiii, 8). 

1 . The values derived from the past, as this is represented 
in the unique history of the Hebrew race and in the body 
As Derived ^^ ^^^ Testament literature. Although of uni- 
from the versal appeal and validity, these values derive 

mainly from Hebrew sources (cf. John iv, 22) ; yet 
doubtless also in St. Paul's teaching to Gentiles much is 
adapted to inherited Greek ways of thinking. Thus the 
highest truth that the past has yielded, through its history, 
its poetry, its prophecy, its law and ritual, is related to the 
Christian era as promise to realization, or as shadow to sub- 
stance (cf. Col. ii, 17 ; Heb. x, i) ; the substance or fulfill- 
ment being expressed in the comprehensive term Christ 
('*the body," Col. ii, 17). The inclusive statement of this 
idea is given at the beginning of the Epistle to the Hebrews : 
'' God, having of old time spoken unto the fathers in the 
prophets by divers portions and in divers manners, hath at 
, the end of these days spoken unto us in his Son, whom he 
appointed heir of all things " (Heb. i, i). 

2. The values inherent in present experience, as believers 
become more intimately conversant with the Christian idea 
As Available ^^^ power. These all center in the type of life 
in the revealed in the personality of Christ, who is re- 

^®®®^ garded less as a historic personage with his work 

finished than as a present, vitalizing spirit continuing his 
activity by the inner power he exerts in men's lives. Such 
power his followers are aware of in themselves. It is that 

[ 609 ] 



GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

wonderful illumination and working energy which has come 
upon them as the Holy Spirit ; a power which they identify 
with Christ, as if his personality had blended with theirs, 
bringing their thought and conduct under a new law of 
being. St. Paul calls this ''the law of the spirit of life in 
Christ Jesus " (Rom. viii, 2). 

Thus, as men's sense of values grows, the historic Jesus, 
who as a Personage once living on earth must be past and 
outside of them, becomes in their idea the Christ within, a 
Messiah increasingly identified with the highest ideals of 
manhood. Every individual man who takes Christ as his 
spiritual Lord is thus related to him ; Christ is each man's 
truest manhood, and the community of those who believe in 
him are related to him as bodily members are related to the 
head whence comes their wisdom and guidance (see i Cor. 
xii, 4-31). The church is accordingly called the body of 
Christ (Eph. i, 23 ; iv, 12 ; Col., ii, 19), under which figure 
it is regarded as an organism directed by his spirit, and 
yet with each member performing his free individual func- 
tion, contributing to one unity of heart and will. Such is 
the lofty ideal of present values that under the teaching 
of such men as St. Paul come to be associated with the 
Christian calling. 

3. The values not yet realized but still future. The New 
Testament literature takes us only far enough to give the 
As yet to be germs and principles of a vast development of 
Realized ideas and their applications to life and history. 
The Christian era is not more truly a fulfillment than a 
prophecy. All the values derived from the past or secured in 
the present are but an ''earnest" (cf. Eph. i, 14), a guaranty of 
greater things to come. In thus forecasting the large future 
the Scripture writers recognize no real line of distinction 
between the future beyond death and the future of ennobled 
manhood here on the earth. The conception seems rather 
to be of one family in heaven and earth (cf. Eph. iii, 15 ; 

[610] 



THE LITERATURE OF VALUES 

Heb. xii, 22, 23), like two provinces of one universal common- 
wealth, raised to a higher grade of being by that power of 
Christ ^which is felt as a present resurrection (Col. iii, 1-4), 
actuated by one spirit and working to one end. All this 
comes to be regarded as the process, in individual and 
society alike, of becoming more thoroughly like Christ, a 
state of being evidenced by increasing ability to see him 
as he is (i John iii, 2 ; cf . i Cor. xiii, 12). Such is the 
tremendous forecast of the future to which Christianity 
is committed. 

L Literary Gifts and Medium of Publication 

To get a just idea of the peculiar power and success of 
the New Testament literature, we need to take account 
of the writers from whom it comes and of the literary 
medium or vehicle in which they expressed themselves. 



The Writers and their Qualifications. The historical por- 
tions of the New Testament, comprising the gospels and 
the Acts, came ultimately, as we have seen, from the reports 
and preaching of common men, whose schooling had been 
the companionship of Jesus and whose purpose was to give 
a truthful and candid statement of what they had seen and 
heard. For this reportage of fact such men were the fit and 
sufficient narrators ; and among the accounts that came 
from their teaching we have the work of one at least, the 
Evangelist Luke, who proved to be no mean historian. 

For interpreting the moral and spiritual values of these 
facts, however, for maintaining these against perversion and 
denial, and for adjusting the new materials of Christian faith 
to the old ideas and prophecies that had led up to them, men 
of a different type of culture were needed, or at least were 
providentially forthcoming. They must be men of keen and 
disciplined minds, able to meet the thought and learning 

[611] 



GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

of their day on its own ground. They must cultivate the 
art of so presenting the truth that it would be both sound 
in reasoning and attractive in form. This need, which is 
distinctively literary, was justly felt by the early apostolic 
teachers. St. Peter, more a man of vigorous action than 
of skillful speech, urges it upon his readers. '* Ready always 
to give answer to every man that asketh you a reason con- 
cerning the hope that is in you " (i Pet. iii, 15), is his coun- 
sel to his readers. Feeling his own limitations in abstruse 
learning, however, he refers them to his great colleague 
St. Paul (2 Pet. iii, 15, 16, — if Peter's, which is by some 
doubted), who can deal masterfully with the hard problems. 
And St. Paul himself is concerned not only with the weighty 
and solid qualities of discourse but with the charm and wit 
necessary to make it attractive. *' Let your speech," he says, 
'' be always with grace, seasoned with salt, that ye may know 
how ye ought to answer each one " (Col. iv, 6). Such were 
the felt needs of the early era, when essentially new values 
of life must make headway in a cultured and civilized world. 

The need was abundantly supplied. As we consider the 
New Testament writings, their evident power and beauty, 
we cannot but be aware that the early church had at its 
service the very best minds of its age, minds qualified, some 
in one way, some in another, to present a rounded and varied 
body of Christian truth. 

Preeminent among .these leaders of thought are to be 
named two : St. Paul, and the author of the fourth gospel. 
The Personal The former, a man born in Tarsus, a Greek 
Sources university center, who had studied Jewish learn- 

ing under Gamaliel, contributes to the New Testament the 
bulk of its epistolary literature. The latter, who calls him- 
self ''the disciple whom Jesus loved," was a man who, be- 
fore he wrote, had long meditated upon the most intimate 
utterances of the Master and had tested them by rare 
powers of intuition. 

[612] 



THE LITERATURE OF VALUES 

Besides these two may be mentioned St. Peter, to whom 
are ascribed two epistles, and two brothers of Jesus, namely, 
James and Jude. Peter was the leader of the original com- 
pany of apostles, and so the chief apostolic authority in the 
Jewish branch of the church. James, who became a Chris- 
tian after Jesus' resurrection, was. the head of the Jerusalem 
church, and, as brother, familiar with the mind and tempera- 
ment of Jesus. He was the author of one epistle, as was 
also Jude. 

One epistle alone, the epistle to the Hebrews, more like 
a treatise than a letter, is anonymous. It has been attributed 
to St. Paul, but the style does not allow us to maintain this. 

Thus, unlike most of the Old Testament, the literature 
of the New is so associated with known writers that we 
can trace and appreciate in eminent degree the intimate per- 
sonal element in it, feeling the power not of a book but of 
a living man. 

II 

The Epistle Form and its Uses. All the literary works 
of the New Testament, succeeding to the gospels and the 
Acts, are in^ whole or in part put in epistolary form, in 
most cases employing the conventional phrases in vogue 
for opening and closing. None of these letters, it would 
seem, were intended to be strictly private. The third 
epistle of John, addressed to Gaius, is most nearly so, but 
second John, addressed " to the elect lady," probably desig- 
nated a whole church under that term. St. Paul's letter to 
Philemon, though mainly personal, includes not only the 
individual addressed but, several others and the church in 
his house ; and his letters to Timothy and Titus, two prom- 
inent pastors,- are addressed to them in their professional 
capacity. 

The letters of the New Testament were sent mostly to 
churches, with the design of being read and heeded as a 

[613] 



GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

current literature : as doctrines or counsels imparted by an 
authoritative teacher at a time when religious authority was 
centered not in a book nor in church decrees, but in a person. 
They represent the pioneer work of Christian teaching. 
Some of the earlier written ones, as to the Thessalonians, 
the Galatians, and the Corinthians, concern themselves more 
particularly with the situations or problems of the individual 
church, making these a peg, as it were, on which to hang 
truths of permanent and universal import. Others of the 
letters, however, were intended as circular letters (cf. Col. 
iv, 1 6), to be copied and distributed to several churches, 
addressing themselves thus to the common Christian situa- 
tion! With the efficient postal system in use in the Roman 
Empire such epistolary communication had become the 
most prevalent means of publication. Facility of travel also 
promoted the custom of using private messengers or church 
helpers and delegates in the service. 

As we reach this latest stage in the Biblical literature it is 
well to note the difference, in tone and style, between the 
The Familiar '^^^ Testament and the Old. The difference 
Tone and corresponds to the difference of relation between 
author and audience. The Old Testament, made 
up of history, prophecy, poetry, law, wisdom, brings its truth 
to nations and communities ; and in its sublime forms and 
style there is a certain remoteness of relation, a lack of 
mutualness and sympathy. In the New Testament the form 
has become epistolary, the most personal and familiar of 
literary forms, as of persons known individually to each 
other. It is friendly and conversational. There is an absence 
of formality and an intimacy of assumed relation which pro- 
mote good will, courtesy, mutual understanding. On the part 
of the writer there is no posing as lawgiver, prophet, or 
sage. Although from an apostle it is like brother to brother 
and friend to friend, on a footing of mutual respect and 
equality. Such is the Christian relation with which the literary 

[614] 



THE LITERATURE OF VALUES 

sentiment of the Bible culminates. Its letters may indeed 
rise to heights of poetic beauty or emotional fervor ; may 
contain profound and weighty thought ; but the intimate 
personal tone keeps them from being academic or having the 
air of a labored literary effort. The gospels, too, embody- 
ing the conversational talks and parables of Jesus, are of the 
same natural feeling and fiber. Thus it is of noteworthy 
significance that the Bible, which begins with the lofty and 
didactic, ends with the personal and familiar. 

Note. The Epistolary Form and Style. On the epistolary form and 
style, as these figure in the life of the early churches, Sir William M. 
Ramsay (" Letters to the Seven Churches," p. 208) remarks : 

"A philosophic exposition of truth was apt to become abstract and 
unreal ; the dialogue form, which the Greeks loved and some of the 
Christian writers adopted, was apt to degenerate into looseness and mere 
literary display ; but the letter, as already elaborated by great thinkers 
and artists who were his predecessors, was determined for [the Christian 
teacher] as the best medium of expression. In this form . . . literature, 
statesmanship, ethics, and religion met, and placed the simple letter on 
the highest level of practical power. Due regard to the practical needs of 
the congregation which he addressed prevented the writer of a letter from 
losing hold on the hard facts and serious realities of life. The spirit of 
the lawgiver raised him above all danger of sinking into the common- 
place and the trivial. Great principles must be expressed in the Christian 
letter. And finally it must have literary form as a permanent monument 
of teaching and legislation." 

Written with reference to the oracular epistles to the churches of Asia 
in Revelation ii and iii, — the most formal letters in the New Testament. 

II. Saint Paul as Orator and Letter Writer 

In tracing the literature of fact as an eventual outgrowth 
of the early apostolic preaching, we have gone beyond the 
dates of the earlier New Testament writings. We have seen 
what the story of Jesus' life and ministry became when 
a generation had passed, after the scattered reminiscences 
of eyewitnesses were in, and time had been given for the 
facts to have been sifted, ordered, and systematized. 

[615] 



GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

We must now return to an earlier period. The first New 
Testament works to be written in finished form were not 
the synoptic gospels and the Acts, but the main body of 
the epistles. And of these the earliest, unless we except the 
Epistle of James, were the great epistles of St. Paul. 



Saint Paul the Man. It is important that we take account 
of this note of time and precedence. Of all the writers 
represented in the New Testament literature St. Paul was 
by far the most vigorous, scholarly, and creative. When we 
consider what he really accomplished — to make the Jewish 
body of truth universal, to make the ideal for which Jesus 
lived and died a force vital and powerful throughout the 
lands and the ages — we must put him in the forefront of 
the world's great thinkers. Not only in his own personal 
utterances is this true, but during the period while the 
gospel record itself was inchoate his shaping mind did much, 
through writing and personal evangelism, to- set his creative 
stamp upon it. To him it fell preeminently to make the 
Christian truth reveal itself among Jews and Gentiles in its 
true value, meaning, and proportion. 

Though St. Luke's account of St. Paul's missionary ac- 
tivities in the Acts has no design of being biographical, nor 
is St. P^aul himself in his epistles concerned with the per- 
sonal events of his life — touching upon these, indeed, when 
he has to do so, reluctantly (cf . 2 Cor. xi, 21 ff .) — yet there 
is no other personality of Scripture, aside from that of Jesus, 
whom we know so well. His writings are the perfect reflec- 
tion of that Christian character which became to him the 
supreme principle of his life. Besides St. Luke's biograph- 
ical details there are a few very valuable autobiographic 
touches in his utterances and writings : notably his twice- 
given account of his early life and conversion, in- his speech 
before his own nation in Jerusalem (Acts xxii, 3-21), and 

[616] 



THE LITERATURE OF VALUES 

in his address before King Agrippa and the procurator 
Festus (Acts xxvi, 1-23) ; his account of the beginning of 
his apostleship, as written to the Galatians who had doubted 
its genuineness (Gal. i, ii-ii, 14) ; his review of his reasons 
aUke for pride and humiUty, as recounted to the Corinthians 
(2 Cor. xi, i6-xii, 10; cf. Phil, iii, 4-7) ; and his analysis 
of his experience with his own sinful nature, as written for 
the instruction of the Roman Christians (Rom. vii). All 
these show with what depth and intensity his Christian ideas, 
which had come upon his convictions in one illuminative 
moment, had wrought themselves into his life. 

Of St. Paul's early life we get enough from his own words 
to show what providential fitness he had both by birth and 
„. education for his great mission. A native of 

His ..... 

Endowments, Tarsus in Cilicia (Acts xxi, 39), which city was a 
Native and center of the liberal learning of his time, he was 

Cultural ^ ' 

of pure Jewish blood (Phil, iii, 5), and proud both 
of his race and of his tribe ; was in religion of the most strict 
and orthodox Jewish sect, that of the Pharisees . (Acts xxvi, 
5), and extremely zealous for their customs and traditions ; 
was educated from early youth under Gamaliel, '' the most 
learned rabbi of the age," in the capital city Jerusalem (Acts 
xxii, 3). Being so expert in all that the Jews deemed most 
valuable in thought, he was thus fitted to deal with Jews on 
their own ground ; and living from birth in the atmosphere 
of Greek ideas, he was correspondingly fitted to adapt his 
teachings to the Gentile range and color of thought. Add 
to this that he had from birth the rights and freedom of 
a Roman citizen (Acts xxii, 28), which fact gave him the 
privileges and immunities that he needed in traversing any 
part of the Empire. Of this advantage he availed himself 
at several crucial points of his career (Acts xvi, 37-40 ; 
xxii, 25 ; XXV, 11). His zeal before his conversion in perse- 
cuting the Christians, for which he never ceased to blame 
himself, was after all a sign of his sincerity of purpose and 

[617] 



GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

so, though mistaken, was quite consistent with a good con- 
science (Acts xxiii, i), and, as well-directed energy, would 
prove an invaluable trait in the arduous work of a Christian 
apostle. Thus all the elements of his personality, outer and 
inner, were most fortunately mixed to fit him for the dis- 
tinctive career to which he was commissioned. 

The conversion of Saul of Tarsus from Judaism to Chris- 
tianity is justly regarded as one of the most far-reaching 
His Life's events of history. The story of it is narrated no 
Turning fewer than three times (Acts ix, xxii, xxvi) : once 
in St. Luke's own historical style, and twice in 
St. Luke's reports of St. Paul's speeches. The three accounts 
agree in essentials, the slight differences being -due to dif- 
ferent occasions and purposes of the recounting. 

The occasion of Saul's sudden conversion resolves itself 
virtually into the simple fact that he saw the Christ as he is 
and identified him with Jesus of Nazareth. This occurred 
in a vision that he had on the way to Damascus, while he 
was on a fanatical errand of persecution ; and the Being he 
saw was the glorified Jesus, appearing several years after his 
resurrection and identifying himself as the One whom Saul 
was persecuting. The apostle never doubted that this was 
as real and veritable an interview as if Jesus were still in 
the flesh ; and all his life thereafter was spent in simple 
obedience to the direction he then obtained. To him it was 
a truly objective experience, like that of the other apostles. 

Yet not all objective. In spite of Saul's mistaken oppo- 
sition up to that time, there was in him a subjective readi- 
ness to respond to Christ when he saw him in the true light. 
His own interpretation of the event was that at the fitting 
time God was pleased to reveal His Son in him (Gal. i, i6). 
From that time forth his ideal was to realize in word and 
work the same spirit of life that had actuated Jesus in his 
ministry, and especially in his sacrificial death as the way 
to resurrection (Phil, iii, lo, ii). The sense of this relation 

[6i8] 



THE LITERATURE OF VALUES 

to Christ became in time so intimate that it was Hke an 
interfusion of a greater personahty with his ; for him, ' ' to 
live," he said, ''was Christ" (Phil, i, 21). 

This consciousness of the deep meaning of his and the 
Christian life, however, did not come to Saul at once on 
his conversion. He must take time for adjustment to his 
new spiritual condition and ideal. This must be done in 
solitude and self-examination. Accordingly, he spent the first 
three years after his conversion in Arabia (Gal. i, 17, 18), 
doubtless in searching study and meditation. Then, going 
up to Jerusalem, he made a fortnight's visit to St. Peter 
and saw St. James the Lord's brother (Gal. i, 18-19). From 
these men he doubtless got such information about Jesus' 
earthly life as he would need for the factual basis of his own 
teaching. What he habitually preached, however, was rather 
the values than the external facts of Jesus' ministry (cf . 2 Cor. 
V, 16) ; which values he deduced from the Christ he had 
seen in vision, who had become the risen Lord and Brother 
of every man. 

In this peculiar experience of St. Paul (for such his name 
became after he began preaching, cf. Acts xiii, 9) we discern 
two elements of special fitness, superior to what we find in 
the older apostles, for the distinctive literary work that fell 
to him to do. First, his conversion was not a reversal of his 
life's ideas but an adjustment and concentration, in which 
he continued to cherish all the permanent values of Judaism 
and could see their consummation and fulfillment. Secondly, 
even by the fact that he had not been a personal companion 
of Jesus he could the better interpret the idealism of the 
Christ to men of every nation who themselves must receive 
him rather by faith than by sight. He himself, dealing 
with Gentiles of every stripe, was an able exponent of the 
same faith. 



[619] 



GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

II 

St. Paul the Orator. In thinking of St. Paul as the writer 
of the letters that bear his name, we are too apt to ignore 
the main literary activity to which he gave his life. . After 
his conversion, as soon as he became fully aware of " that 
for which he was laid hold of by Christ Jesus " (Phil, iii, 12), 
he became a traveling preacher and teacher ; making it his 
life's business to interest men in his Christian message, to 
plant and organize churches, and to exercise a founder's care 
over them until they were well enough manned and indoc- 
trinated to maintain themselves. In this work he showed a 
masterly generalship by choosing important strategic points 
or centers of influence : residing for various periods of time, 
sometimes amounting to years, and later repeating his visits, 
in such cities as Antioch, Philippi, Thessalonica, Corinth, and 
Ephesus ; not to omit Csesarea and Rome, in both of which 
cities he, though a prisoner, had much freedom of intercourse 
with the world and earned the recognition accorded to a man 
of intellectual and spiritual power (cf. Acts xxiv, 25, 26; 
xxviii, 30, 31). In all this extraordinarily active life he made 
his way and achieved success by public speaking, that is, as a 
powerful and persuasive orator. 

St. Paul himself, it would seem, set no great store either by 
the impressiveness of his personal presence (cf. 2 Cor. x, 10) 
His Manner or by the eloquence of his public speech (cf . i Cor. 
of Speaking [[^ I, 4). He was inclined rather to attribute the 
undeniably marvelous effects of his preaching to the intrin- 
sic power of his theme. But there are good reasons for 
a less deprecatory estimate. To quote from the Reverend 
Maurice Jones : ''If the power to produce striking effects, 
and a marvelous facility of adapting himself to every class 
of hearer and to every variety of conditions, be the marks 
of a true orator, we are bound to confess that the Apostle 
possessed them in no small degree. . . . The effect of his 

[620] 



THE LITERATURE OF VALUES 

first recorded sermon at Antioch in Pisidia, which brought 
the whole city to Usten to him on the following Sabbath 
(Acts xiii, 44) ; the burning eloquence which filled the 
conscience-stricken Felix with fear and awe (Acts xxiv, 25) ; 
the impassioned oratory which moved F^estus to exclaim that 
he was mad (Acts xxvi, 24) ; the persuasiveness which fasci- 
nated and kept quiet a howling mob of Jews thirsting for 
his life (Acts xxii, 2), — all these tell the same tale, and 
assure us that among the many and outstanding gifts pos- 
sessed' by the Apostle, that of speech was not the least. 
High Roman officials, Jewish kings, crowds of heathen, 
whether among the dilettanti of Athens or the peasants of 
Lystra, all acknowledge the power of that magic voice. . . . 
To the unlettered crowd at Lystra there was but one name 
which could do justice to the brilliancy of his eloquence, that 
of Mercury, the herald of the gods "^ (Acts xiv, 12). 

The reports of St. Paul's public addresses are all from the 
pen of St. Luke, the writer of the Acts, who was for several 
Notes of years the intimate friend and traveling companion 
Speeches of the apostle. Some of these speeches, it is not 
to be doubted, he himself heard. For others he 
must depend on report, or perhaps procure an account of 
them from the apostle himself. As reported to us they are 
all brief, and doubtless comprise in each case only the gist 
or main course of what was said ; and much of the wealth 
of color, illustration, and impassioned appeal can be only 
meagerly reproduced. Enough is preserved, however, to show 
the w^onderful tact with which the apostle adapted himself 
to every audience and occasion ; the variety of appeal that 
he made to very different classes of people; yet withal the 
absolute singleness and sincerity of purpose which drove him 
in each case straight to his point, with oratorical skill yet 
quite without the tricks or sophistry of the rhetorician. His 
absorbing sense of the power of his theme (cf. i Cor. ix, 16) 

1 Jones, " St. Paul the Orator," p. i. 

[621] 



GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

is what gives power, unity, and eloquence to all his work. 
He himself describes this in i Cor. ix, 19-27, illustrating 
his singleness of aim by a figure taken from athletics : "I 
therefore so run as not uncertainly ; so fight I, as not beating 
the air." 

Note. List of St. PauPs Speeches. Of St. Paul's reported speeches, 
" six are longer and more noteworthy than the rest " ; ^ and they present 
such a variety of treatment and occasion that we naturally conclude them 
to have been selected by St. Luke as broadly typical of the main aspects 
of his work. They are : 

1 . The speech at Antioch in Pisidia, Acts xiii, given before an audi- 
ence of his own nation, in a synagogue. 

2. The speech at Athens, Acts xvii, given before an audience of 
Greek philosophers. 

3. The speech at Miletus, Acts xx, given as a farewell address to a 
Christian audience. 

4. The speech at Jerusalem, Acts xxii, given to a Jewish hostile mob ; 
an apologia pro vita sua. 

5. The speech before Felix, Acts xxiv, given as a defense before a 
Roman tribunal. 

6. The speech before King Agrippa, Acts xxvi, given on an occasion 
of great pomp before a Jewish king and a Roman procurator. 

To these main addresses may be added : brief notes of speeches to 
an unlettered crowd at Lystra (Acts xiv, 15-17); to the Sanhedrim in 
Jerusalem (Acts xxiii, 1-6); and to the Jews at Rome, soon after his 
arrival there as a prisoner (Acts xxviii, 1 7-28). 

Thus, not only in variety of audience and occasion as represented in 
SL Luke's reports, but " we have records of his addresses at the great 
centres of imperial and provincial life. . . . The selection of speeches, 
although exceedingly limited in quantity, is by the variety and compre- 
hensiveness of its contents, of the greatest importance, and redounds, 
in no small degree, to the credit of the author of the Acts as a historian 
of high rank " (Jones, p. 5). 

In estimating St. Paul's speeches we must bear in mind 
that we do not have them immediately from him, but from 
St. Luke, who in reporting them may supposably have im- 
pressed something of his own style upon them. We have 

1 For this list and remarks thereon, see Gardiner, in " Cambridge Biblical 
Essays," and Jones, " St. Paul the Orator." 

[622] 



THE LITERATURE OF VALUES 

to bear in mind also the conventional method of ancient 
'historians, whose custom was to compose speeches and put 
Bearing on them in the mouths of their characters. St. Luke's 
the Epistles close Conversance with St. Paul's mind, however, 
would remove the necessity of much invention of speeches ; 
besides, he was the actual hearer of some of them. 

Beyond this, however, there is a close analogy between 
the speeches and the epistle. Not only are the lines of 
thought as much alike as the variety of occasion would per- 
mit, but the epistles themselves, in the glow and impetuosity 
of their style, in the close grip, as it were, of a man with an 
audience, and in their intimate personal tone, are like public 
speech reduced to writing. In the direct and incisive way of 
marshaling his thoughts, too, St. Paul's mind was eminently 
oratorical. The chosen occasion of his epistles was always 
like that of 'a pastor conversing with his people. In such a 
literary medium it was, accordingly, familiar yet impassioned, 
that he gave his great Christian message to the ages. 

Ill 

Letters of the Active Missionary. If we would trace the 
development of St. Paul's thought through his epistles, we 
must take them not in the order in which they occur in the 
New Testament but in that which a careful study of their 
thought and occasion reveals as chronological. This order 
can be ascertained without much uncertainty, except in the 
relative order of one or two of the shorter ones. 

The development of thought which this study reveals 
may be traced in the large in two stages. These may be 
defined somehow thus : The gospel which St. Paul has in 
charge is indeed universal, not to • be monopolized by any 
race or class (cf. Rom. i, 14, 16). But it has its roots in 
Jewish ways of thinking, inherited from an ancient history 
and literature, and in its branches in ways of thinking which 
Gentiles cannot understand without first being educated in 

[ 623 ] 



GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

Jewish presuppositions. Flence the great effort of St. Paul's 
first period, while the letters he wrote were those of the 
active missionary, was so to reckon with the roots of his 
belief, his inherited Jewish ideas, as to retain all their essen- 
tial values yet translate them, so to say, into the Gentile or 
rather the universal currency of thinking. 

The epistles of St. Paul's first period comprise those 
which he wrote while he was a busy traveling evangelist. 
The Epistles Planting new churches and watching over those 
of the First already -planted. The period ends with his arrest 
at Jerusalem and the beginning of his two years' 
imprisonment in Caesarea (Acts xxiii, 35 ; xxiv, 27).. 

It must not be supposed that these were all the letters he 
wrote. From the fact that in one letter he warns his readers 
against forgeries (2 Thess. ii, 2) and tells them how to iden- 
tify a genuine letter of his (2 Thess. iii, 17), it would seem 
that his correspondence was extensive enough to be prized. 
In another letter he refers to an epistle now lost (i Cor. v, 9). 
The letters that we have are doubtless those that were felt 
to be of cardinal importance for the instruction of the 
churches. They rise, however, out of concrete situations 
and adapt themselves to particular emergencies ; they are 
applications of Christian wisdom and exposition to the 
religious and social affairs of life. 

In their most probable chronological order, these epistles 
of the first period are : ^ 

First Thessalonians, written from Corinth a. d. 52 to a newly 
established church (Robertson, p. 167). It recognizes essentially 
the primitive Christian doctrine. 

Second Thessalonia7is, written soon after, partly to correct 
certain misconceptions of the teaching of the first letter. 

First Corinthians, written from Ephesus a.d. 57 (or 56), to 
discuss some grave problems which had risen in the church at 

1 The order and the dates here given follow Robertson, " Epochs in the 
Life of Paul " (New York, 1909). 

[624] 



THE LITERATURE OF VALUES 

Corinth. It contains some of the main elements of St. Paul's 
gospel, notably about the resurrection and about the specific gifts 
of the Spirit (Robertson, p. 189). 

Seco7id Cori7ithia?is, written from Ephesus perhaps a year or two 
after; an intensely personal letter, written partly to mitigate the 
severity of an intervening letter now lost (2 Cor. ii, 4), and partly 
to prepare the readers' minds for a contemplated visit to them, in 
which he may have to say sharp things (xii, 14; xiii, 10), It 
contains some remarkable accounts of Paul's personal experiences 
both of hardship (xi, 21-33) ^^^ o^ unusual spiritual revelations 
(xii, I— 10). 

Galatians, written at some time in these active years, but 
giving no certain clue of time or place, with the object to main- 
tain his apostolic authority and the truth of his message, to a 
church which under the influence of Judaizing meddlers is in 
danger of deserting the freedom and purity of its faith. It is 
perhaps the most impassioned of St. Paul's epistles. 

Roinans, written from Ephesus a.d. 57 (Robertson, p. 206): 
the first of his epistles written to a church which he had not estab- 
lished nor seen, though it announces his purpose of visiting them 
soon (xv, 24). It is written in his matured consciousness of beifig 
the recognized teacher and leader of all the Gentile churches, and 
contains in the most systematic form the doctrinal substance of 
his gospel. In this respect it is as truly a treatise as an epistle, 
though not expressed in such rigid and academic terms as one 
associates with a treatise. It is from a somewhat narrow inter- 
pretation of Romans, especially, that the one-sided Puritan theology 
has been deduced ; no blame, however, to the epistle itself, only 
to myopic views of it. 

To St. Paul, as a thoroughly trained scholar, all the lines 
of Jewish thought and ideal met and culminated in his gos- 
Two Lines of P^^ ^^ Jesus Christ. We cannot touch upon these 
Transformed here with any fullness of treatment. Two main 
Jewish Ideas jjj^gg j^^y j^g noted, however, as typical of the 

way in which the ancient Jewish thought was transformed, 
through the apostle's mind, into a living and working 
principle of life. 

[625]. 



GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

I. '' Because of the hope of Israel I am bound with this 
chain " (Acts xxviii, 20), St. Paul said to the chief person- 
ages of his nation whom he met when as a prisoner he 
arrived at Rome. From his Judaistic consciousness he in- 
herited in pure intensity what has been called " the habitual 
expectancy of the Jewish race." Beyond all other religions 
theirs had been a prophetic religion. They looked forward 
confidently to a kingdom of heaven, and to a Messiah as 
universal king. But as Jews their idea had been ethnic and 
exclusive : they deemed that this kingdom would mean their 
dominance of the nations, and that their Messiah, while 
their race's king, would be the other nations' despot. The 
Christians had learned more hospitable and fraternal things. 
In becoming a Christian St. Paul merely took up this expec- 
tation as it was in process of enlargement in the new Chris- 
tian sect, and became the principal factor in translating it 
into universal terms. He joined with that sect (cf. Acts xxiv, 
14-16) in recognizing that the candidate for Messiahship, 
Jesus of Nazareth, had already completed his preliminary 
ministry, and in his death and resurrection had revealed the 
lines on which the kingdom of heaven was to be perfected 
among men. Jesus Christ reigned even now aS unseen Lord 
of his faithful subjects, Jews and Greeks alike ; he was '* the 
power of God and the wisdom of God" (i Cor. i, 24) ; his 
will and spirit were the principle of a new life in all who 
believed ; and he was destined to come again and gather his 
subjects to himself. 

It was in this form that the Jewish apocalyptic idea of 
the coming judgment and the end of the age presented itself 
to the primitive Christians. St. Paul entered heartily into 
the idea, emphasizing it in his preaching and writing (i Thess. 
iv, 13-17). In his earliest extant epistle — First Thessalo- 
nians — the coming of Christ as fully established Messiah 
is regarded as very near, as due, indeed, in that generation, 
though no definite date could be set for it. In Second 

[626] . • 



THE LITERATURE OF VALUES 

Thessalonians he corrects some errors of faith and conduct 
which this expectation had engendered, and virtually postpones 
the parousia until first the " man of sin" (2 Thess. ii, 2-4), 
typifying the worldly power of evil and denial, is met and 
vanquished. The older Jewish imagery still clung to his 
mind, however ; and in the next epistle, First Corinthians, 
the coming parousia is conceived in spectacular terms ( i Cor. 
XV, 51, 52), with sound of trumpet and sudden transforma- 
tion of bodily conditions ; still regarded, too, as due in that 
generation. It takes time to translate one's imagination 
from apocalyptic to actual. 

This apocalyptic imagery, however, was a feature of the 
time and of racial imagination. As it came more and more 
in contact with the more abstract and logical Gentile con- 
ceptions it was destined to fall away, or rather to pass from 
the visual to the spiritual, and from an expectation to a 
present realized condition. There are not wanting indica- 
tions that St. Paul himself gradually relinquished it, while 
still retaining all its permanent values for humanity in 
general. 

2. F>om his Jewish race and religion St. Paul inherited 
what may be called a passion for perfection, such as no 
other religious ideal could show. It was this passion which 
underlay the undeniably good elements of Pharisaism. As 
a Pharisee he had been exceedingly zealous to keep the 
Mosaic law perfectly ; as a Pharisee, too, he had longed so 
to live as to attain to the resurrection from the dead (cf . Acts 
xxiii, 6). But with his conversion to Christianity these ideals, 
though still equally charged with passion, underwent a rapid 
and radical transformation. As for the law, which he had 
come to regard not as mere Mosaic precept but as the es- 
sential law of his being, he became aware that he could 
not keep it ; that it was too absolute for any man to keep, 
there being a law of sin in his members like a dead weight 
dragging him down. He describes this in the celebrated 

[627] 



GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

passage, Romans vii, in which the bondage of the natural 
man is owned and deplored. But over against this failure 
he sets his Christian resource : a new energy of life within, 
which he calls '' the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus " 
(Rom. viii, 2), and in its practical beneficence '' the law of 
Christ " (Gal. vi, 2). This law, in its relation to conduct, he 
identifies with the spirit of love, saying, '' Love worketh no 
ill to his neighbor ; love therefore is the fulfilment of the 
law " (Rom. xiii, 10). 

The sense of " freedom from the law of sin and death " 
thus engendered transforms all his Jewish heritage of austere 
law and guilty conscience into the sense of a new power and 
peace in his personality, which he identifies with the pres- 
ence of the Holy Spirit ; and this, being the spirit of Christ, 
carries with it the guaranty of resurrection through the might 
of Him who rose again. Thus his severest Pharisaic ideals 
are at once corrected and more than realized. All the epistles 
of this period are occupied with various phases, expressed 
in great vigor and enthusiasm of language, of this transforma- 
tion of Jewish ideas, through Christianity, into the universal 
idiom for mankind. 

IV 

Letters of the Roman Prisoner. Until by imprisonment 
St. Paul was laid aside from the active work of a traveling 
evangelist and organizer, he seems to have had mainly in 
mind the adjustment of ideas inherited from Jewish sources 
to the uses of the Christian world in general. The Epistle 
to the Romans, the latest written letter of the first period, is 
the one in which this adjustment is most fully made. 

In the letters written from his prison in Rome, however, 
we discern a new background for his instruction. He accom- 
modates himself in a marked degree to the thought native 
to the Gentiles themselves ; which thought contains elements 
derived from Greek philosophy, Oriental mysticism, and the 

[628] 



THE LITERATURE OF VALUES 

various conceptions developed among the heterogeneous popu- 
lations of Asia Minor. Here again he is hospitable and 
tolerant ; we have seen his attitude in his speech at Athens 
(Acts xvii, 22-31). His object is not to introduce an entirely 
alien way of thinking but to direct whatever is good to a 
lucid Christian solution, and to correct the errors and cor- 
ruptions that inhere in the various systems. Thus we may 
regard his work in this period as the Christianizing of the 
world's inherited thinking, especially of that thinking which 
inheres with life and conduct. 

St. Paul's removal from an active life of travel and 
preaching began with his arrest in Jerusalem ; whence he 
The Epistles ^^^ taken to Caesarea, the residence of the procu- 
of the Second rator, and there detained two years awaiting trial 
(Acts xxiv, 27). On appealing to Caesar he was 
taken to Rome, where again he was a prisoner for two whole 
years before his case came before the Emperor's court (Acts 
xxviii, 30). In both places his imprisonment was a com- 
paratively easy one (cf. Acts xxiv, 23 ; xxviii, 30, 31), in 
which he could be attended by friends, and through them 
could communicate with the various churches under his care. 

It was from his Roman imprisonment that the most 
important of these later epistles were written. The account 
of his career as given in the Acts ends with this first Roman 
residence, and for further information about him we have 
to rely on statements and allusions in the epistles themselves. 
When at length his case came to trial he was acquitted, 
and had then a period of liberty, during which he made 
some visits among the Macedonian and perhaps the Asian 
churches. Then came a second arrest and imprisonment in 
Rome, followed by his martyrdom, concerning which latter 
we have only tradition of uncertain authority to guide us. 
A group of later epistles, addressed not to churches but 
to individuals, dates from this last period of release and the 
last imprisonment. 

[629] 



GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

The following are the epistles of St. Paul's prison period : 

Philippians, written to the church that has had the friendliest 
relations with him, at a time when he finds that even in prison his 
efforts to witness to the truth of Christ are working to the further- 
ance of the good cause (Phil, i, 1 2-24). Full of joy and good cheer, 
it is perhaps the most charming of St. Paul's epistles. 

Colossians, written to correct an incipient heresy which is creep- 
ing into the church at Colosse : a disturbing philosophy and mys- 
ticism which is confusing the faith of the churches and tending to 
destroy their unity and equality in Christ. 

Philemon, a letter intrusted for delivery to a runaway slave, 
Onesimus, whom St. Paul has met and converted, and is now 
sending back to his owner in Colosse, recommending his reinstate- 
ment as no longer a menial but a Christian brother (cf. Col. iv, 9). 
The letter breathes a rare grace of the Christian spirit and the 
nobility of the true gentleman. 

Ephesians, sent as a circular letter to the churches of the region 
about Colosse, and dealing in a less controversial way with much 
the same tendencies noted in the Epistle to the Colossians. The 
words " in Ephesus " are missing from the address in the two 
most ancient manuscripts ( Codex Sinaiticiis and Codex Vaticanus) ; 
and many suppose that it was so left that the name of the par- 
ticular church might be copied in, and that thus the letter might 
be transcribed and sent on or exchanged ; as is, indeed, suggested 
in Col. iv, 16, where a letter to the Laodiceans, by some identified 
with this epistle, is mentioned. 

First Timothy and Titus, written during St. Paul's period of 
release, to counsel and encourage the persons named, who were 
pastors in Ephesus and Crete respectively, and the apostle's 
most beloved helpers. Full of wise counsel both personal ,and 
communal. 

Second Timothy, written from his last imprisonment, when the 
aged apostle, resigned and peaceful, feels that his life of strenuous 
activity is over and that death is near. The letter is full of practical 
wisdom and good sense. 

It is to the epistles to the Colossians and the Ephesians, 
especially, that we must look for St. Paul's most matured 

[630] 



THE LITERATURE OF VALUES 

and finished Christian thinking. They were written at a 
time when his gospel had been introduced into all the world 
(Col. i, 6, 23) as a working and vitalizing power, 
of Matured The time would seem to have come, therefore, 
Christian fQj- ^ gj^^j ^iud rounded summary of this message 

Thought -^ ^ 

of truth, suited alike to Gentiles and Jews, and 
in forms which should utilize Greek habits of thought as 
well as Jewish. 

The occasion of these letters was the report of a tendency 
in the church at Colosse to desert the simplicity of their 
faith and become involved in the confused and mystic phi- 
losophies of which Asia Minor was full. With his letter to 
this church he sent also another letter intended for all the 
churches of the region, and setting forth the same ideas 
in rather more systematic and less controversial terms — the 
letter which we now know as the Epistle to the Ephesians.^ 
Both letters are rather more involved and difficult in style 
than his earlier ones, owing partly to the more abstruse phi- 
losophies which it was his aim to correct and simplify, and 
partly to the apostle's vehemence in setting forth a vividly 
realized truth. Both letters reveal, too, the supreme subject 
of St. Paul's meditation during this period of enforced leisure. 
It was the person of Christ : his unique rank in creation 
(cf. Col. i, 15, 16) and his unique value for the believer's 
life ; or, as he expresses the whole idea, '' the unsearchable 
riches of Christ " (Eph. iii, 8). In the exposition of this 
subje<:t he reaches a height far beyond what his Jewish 
thinking has given him data for. 

In two main lines we may trace this matter of St. Paul's 
later thinking and its advance on his earlier. 

I . We have seen how, in pursuance of the Jewish expecta- 
tion of a coming kingdom and world-judgment, he viewed 
Jesus as the risen and ascended Lord under whose spiritual 
direction men were now living, in the belief that he would 

^ See note on Ephesians, p. 630. 

[631] 



GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

soon come again in person as the fully enthroned Messiah. 
This is essentially the view of the primitive church, when 
it first started as a Jewish sect. St. Paul's later thought of 
Christ, however, is of a Being far more intimately related 
to creation and manhood ; a Being described as " the first- 
born of all creation" (Col. i, 15), through whom all things 
are created, to whom all ranks of being owe their life, and 
in whom dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily 
(Col. ii, 9). Of all things in heaven and earth Christ is the 
Head and Chief. This the apostle squarely maintains, going 
so far, indeed, as to call him "the image of the invisible 
God" (Col. i, 15), without actually calling him Deity. 

He is led to declare this view by the fact that the churches 
to whom he is writing are speculating on an elaborate phi- 
losophy of creation in which Christ is virtually lost in a host 
of spiritual beings, rank Over rank, between man and God. 
The word " fullness " {plerdmd), which he uses of Christ, is 
one of the current terms of this philosophy, which he thus de- 
fines and adapts. He is encountering the earlier stage of a 
philosophy which later caused much confusion in the church 
under the name of gnosticism. St. Paul's object in thus 
dealing with it is not so much to deny or oppose it as so 
to simplify the terms of the Christian faith that men's specu- 
lations may not dissipate it in a mystic cloudland of theory. 
He warns the Colossians against worshiping a hierarchy of 
angels (Col. ii, 18), without holding the Head of all, who 
alone is worthy of their homage (cf. Eph. vi, 12). 

2. We have seen how St. Paul, in writing to those who 
have been Jews, struggles with the sense of sin and a broken 
law, and views Christ as a Saviour who atones and insures 
the resurrection from death. In these latter epistles, how- 
ever, he views Christ not merely as an atoning Sacrifice or 
as a Lord working over and for us, but as an energizing 
Spirit within. ■ Christ is really, in the last analysis, our own 
manhood made complete. We are related to him, therefore, 

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THE LITERATURE OF VALUES 

as members of the human body are related to the head from 
which they receive wisdom and direction (Eph. iv, 12 ; Col. 
ii, 19; cf. I Cor. xii, 12-18). And so there is scope for all 
the varieties of function which men of different talents and 
temperaments may be fitted for ; while deeply underneath 
they are in entire spiritual harmony through their Head, 
making up one solidarity of manhood, which can be gauged, 
by nothing short of " a fullgrown man," according to ''the 
measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ " (Eph. iv, 13). 
This he calls "the mystery, . . . which is Christ in you, 
the hope of glory " (Col. i, 27) ; using the term " mystery " 
as it is familiar to Greek minds (cf. Eph. iii, 3 ; vi, 19), from 
the Eleusinian and other mysteries of their religion. Chris- 
tianity also has its esoteric element, its mystery ; but its dis- 
tinction is that what has long been hidden and occult is now 
revealed (Col. i, 26) ; a mystery whose secret may become 
the possession of all men who will accept it. 

HL From Jewish to Christian Idiom 

We have noted how St. Paul, in his great work with the 
Gentiles, translated his inherited Jewish ideas into Christian 
values for their sakes, and how at a later stage he did a 
similar service to them in their Greek ways of thinking. In 
this kind of work he was not alone, nor was it for Gentiles 
only that such transformation of Jewish ideas had to be made. 
For believers also whose antecedents were Jewish, and whose 
literary heritage had been, as it still was, only the Old 
Testament,' an important duty of the early Christian writers 
was to expound Old Testament usages, types, symbols, and 
principles in the light of the new Christian faith, or, as here 
expressed, to make transition from Jewish to Christian idiom. 
This was done in order to make the great body of the sacred 
literature available for present and permanent uses. It is 
thus expressed by St. Paul : " For whatsoever things were 

[^33] 



GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

written aforetime were written for our learning, that through 
patience and through comfort of the scriptures we might 
have hope " (Rom. xv, 4). 

Several prominent epistles, addressed not to particular 
churches or individuals but to the Christian world in general, 
embody this endeavor. 



Hebrews, and the Fulfillment of Types. It may be noted 
that the quoted passages in the gospels, the Acts, and St. 
Paul's epistles are detached passages taken mostly from the 
Psalms and the Prophets. These parts of Scripture, as being 
probably those in most familiar use, are also copiously drawn 
upon in the Epistle to the Hebrews ; which, indeed, is fulleij 
of quotations and allusions than any other Scripture book. 

Beyond this, however, and as its most distinctive trait, 
the epistle founds itself on a whole line of the old literature. 
That line is the one with which every Jew is familiar ; the 
one, indeed, by which he sets the most store. It is the line 
which embodies the Mosaic law, the ritual services of the 
Temple, and the providentially ordered course of history. 
The writer's aim is to show that the distinctive ideas under- 
lying the Hebrew history and worship — ideas of the ministry 
of angels, of the rest in the promised land as secured by Moses 
and Joshua, of the high-priesthood with its duties, of the 
most holy place, of the whole system of ritual and sacrifice 
— are merely types and symbols of something to come and, 
therefore, in themselves unfinal. The perfect fulfillment 
and clarifier of all these is Christ, who is superior to men 
and angels and the Mediator of a new covenant. In him 
is the manhood rest and home after which men of faith 
aspired through all the dim ages before him. Of these 
ancient worthies a notable bead-roll is given in the eleventh 
chapter ; men of faith and sturdy energy of whom it is said : 
'* They that say such things make it manifest that they are 

[634] 



THE LITERATURE OF VALUES 

seeking after a country of their own " (Heb. xi, 14), and yet 
that they '' received not the promise, God having provided 
some better thing concerning us, that apart from us they 
should not be made perfect" (xi, 39, 40). 

The epistle is thus a masterly resume and interpretation 
of the Jewish religious and traditional system, considered as 
an adumbration of (cf . x, i ) and preparation for Christianity. 

The Epistle to the Hebrews is evidently intended prima- 
rily for some Christian community whose members are 
Origin and imbued with Jewish ideas, and perhaps living in 
^^ daily contact with the legal customs of the Old 

Testament. No community is so fitted to answer these 
conditions as the church at Jerusalem, the mother church, 
as it existed before the destruction of the city and the Tem- 
ple a. d. 70. Of this church the ''great three" apostles, 
Peter and John and James (the last named the brother of 
Jesus), were the leaders, but as it would seem in the larger 
capacity of general directors and overseers, and not of men 
of letters. Besides their leadership there would be needed 
for the church, especially in its representative and standard- 
giving capacity, such educative training in their literature 
as a treatise like this could give, and notably to those who 
had not seen Jesus but had heard of him from those who had 
known him (cf. Heb. ii, 3). 

The epistle was not written, as the Authorized Version 
assumes,^ by St. Paul. It is in a style and line of thinking 
quite different from his, though it is so truly in harmony 
with his ideas that he may well have had some connection 
with the production of it, perhaps as counselor and adviser. 
The likeliest account of its origin, as seems to me, is that 
of Professor Ramsay 2, who believes that it was written from 
Caesar ea, where Philip the Evangelist lived (Acts xxi, 8), and 
that its date of composition was a.d. 59, toward the end 

1 See title of the epistle in the King James (Authorized) Version. 

2 Ramsay, " Luke the Physician," pp. 301 ff. 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

of the procuratorship of Felix, while St. Paul was a state 
prisoner there. If this was so, the writer may have been 
Philip himself, who, one of the original seven deacons, became 
an evangelist and teacher to the Christians in Samaria and 
other parts who had been Jews (Acts vi, 5 ; viii, 5-8, 26, 40). 

Note. The Authorship. Other ideas of its authorship have been 
advocated : that it was written by Apollos, by Barnabas, by Priscilla 
(Harnack's idea) ; but these, like the idea here adopted, are all conjectural. 
The authorship is a secondary matter. The fact remains that the epistle 
is one of the most valuable documents of the early Christianity, supply- 
ing an element without which the New Testament literature, as a rounded 
and finished whole, would seem distinctly poorer. 

II 

James, and the Wisdom from Above. The Epistle of James 
was written for Christians in all places who had been Jews ; 
being addressed ''to the twelve tribes which are of the dis- 
persion " (James i, i). Its author was not James the son of 
Zebedee, who was put to death a.d. 44 by Herod (Acts xii, 
2) ; nor James the son of Alphaeus ( = James the less), of 
whom nothing is recorded (cf . Matt, x, 3 ; Mark xv, 40) ; 
but James the brother of Jesus, who was not one of the 
original apostles, but became a believer after his brother's 
resurrection, and later was the primate of the church in Jeru- 
salem. As such, he was in the fitting position to write such 
an encyclical letter as this purports to be, made up as it is 
of practical counsels and precepts for the Christian's daily 
living ; not scholarly and theological, but as it were a manual 
of Christian common-sense. 

As Hebrews has illuminated and applied the historical 
and ritual strain in the ancient literature, this Epistle of 
Its Distinc- James follows into riper significance the strain 
tive Interest Qf Wisdom, as represented in such books as 
Proverbs and Job. There is the same clearness and terseness 
of phrase ; the same use of familiar figures and analogies ; 

[636] 



THE LITERATURE OF VALUES 

the same purpose of giving counsel for the practical rela- 
tions of life and society. Its tone is that of the Wisdom 
literature. It defines the uses of trial, the virtue of stead- 
fastness and sincerity, the real spirit of practical religion, 
the law of Christian liberty, the unity before God of high 
and humble, rich and poor,- the Christian control of the 
tongue, and many more such things, — all genuine Wisdom 
principles , made Christhke. Highest of all, it inculcates, as 
in fundamental contrast to earthly wisdom, ''the wisdom that 
is from above," which ''is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, 
easy to be entreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without 
fickleness, without hypocrisy" (iii, 13-17). It takes the 
values of Hebrew Wisdom, as James knew them through 
their favorite Scripture utterances, and raises them to their 
matured Christian power.^ 

An immense literary interest attaches to this epistle, 
considered as the work of James the brother of our Lord. 
Its Cultural James was not with his greater brother during 
Source ^\^q latter's Messianic ministry, but the boyhood 

and young manhood of the two must have been passed to- 
gether during much of the thirty years before Jesus entered 
upon his public work. The epistle doubtless draws many 
things from the store of ideas common to the two during 
their early life in Nazareth. A similar cast of ideas is appar- 
ent in the utterances of the brothers. The Epistle of James 
is remarkably parallel, or at least analogous, in many places, 
both in its use of illustrative figures and in its interpretations 
of truth, to the Sermon on the Mount, which comes from 
Jesus' initial teaching, and to the parables and conversations 
which reflect his personal method. Thus it embodies much 
of the line of practical truth with which Jesus' mind was 
conversant before he became known to his nation through 
his public utterances. 

1 See Genung, " The Hebrew Literature of Wisdom in the Light of 
To-day," Chapter VIII. 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

It is just the sane practical guidance of this kind that 
James here gives for the community of Christian brethren,, 
''the twelve tribes of the dispersion," who have supple- 
mented their truest Judaism by committing themselves to 
the wisdom of Christ. As St. Paul the scholar, with his 
wonderful insight into the miitd of Jew and Greek, has 
mirrored the theological and Christological values ; as the 
author of Hebrews, imbued with the ancient historic and 
symbolic lore, has taken this as it was ready to die (cf. Heb. 
viii, 1 3) and fixed it upon its permanent antitype : so James, 
trained in the sound sense of the Nazareth home, has trans- 
lated '' the breath and finer spirit " of wisdom into Christian 
values, which every common man, whether scholar or not, 
may understand and live by. 

Ill 

Epistles from Jesus' Personal Circle. Besides these epis- 
tles of Hebrews and James, which draw their thoughts 
largely from the transformed Old Testament values, there 
are two general epistles from St. Peter, the x:hief of the 
apostles, and one from Jude, '' the brother of James " 
(Jude i), and so of Jesus. These, while aware of the Old 
Testament stores of truth, address themselves more particu- 
larly to the current hopes and perils of the Christian cause 
and the tendencies which, as it goes on to later conditions, 
that cause is developing. 

St. Peter's first epistle, written from Rome (which city he 
names Babylon, v, 13, according to a custom of the early 
The First Christians), is much in the manner of St. Paul's pas- 
Epistie of toral letters, counseling the Christian '' sojourners 
®*®^ " of the dispersion " (i, i) in their everyday domes- 
tic relations — servants, wives, husbands — to live worthily 
of their priceless hope, as good citizens and pure-minded men 

[638] 



THE LITERATURE OF VALUES 

conscious of the wonderful redemption that is theirs, and wait- 
ing patiently for the coming of Christ. The apostle writes 
in the shadow of approaching trials and persecutions which 
are to befall the Christian community ; and he is especially 
concerned that in the spirit of their Master they shall suffer 
not as evildoers but as righteous and inoffensive men (ii, 
15, 19, 20; iii, 17; iv, 14-16), so vindicating a Christian 
character under such conditions as befell their Lord. 

Though evidently well on in age, and in a position of 
authority, St. Peter writes to the elders of the churches as 
a " fellow-elder " (v, i), putting himself by the side of them. 
The whole epistle shows in a notable way how the ministry 
and teachings of Jesus ripened in the heart of his most 
headstrong disciple into a beauty of steadfastness and suffer- 
ing for righteousness' sake, which spirit he inculcates as 
the church's divine power against the wickedness and cor- 
ruptions of the world. The Master's prayer for him before 
his denial that his '' faith fail not" (Luke xxii, 31, 32) was 
abundantly answered. No other epistle in the Bible is so 
direct a reflection of the life and words of the Master. 

St. Peter's second epistle, which, because it is so different 
in style and spirit from the first, many deny to him, is writ- 
The Second ^^^ when more troublous times have come upon 
Epistle of the church, not only from without in the shape 
® ®^ of persecutions but from within in the shape of 

false teachings, hurtful philosophies, and skepticism. The 
church is evidently coming into contact with the wave of 
gnostic intellectualism and lawless materialism which began 
to invade it in the latter part of the first century. Belief in 
the parousia was coming to be scoffed at by those who could 
not interpret it in spiritual terms ; and the writer must needs 
remind them that dates for such an event cannot be set, 
that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years and that 
the event will come suddenly, apocalyptically, and without 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

observation. The intuition of the epistle is thus upon the 
verge of the apocalyptic disclosure soon to come in the 
Revelation of John ^ (2 Pet. iii, 8-10; cf. Isa. Iv, 11). 

The epistle purports to be a product of St. Peter's old 
age, when he is expecting soon to '' strike his tent" (2 Pet. 
i, 13-15), and is arranging to leave such a remembrance of 
•Jesus after his " decease " (2 Pet. i, 15 ; cf. Luke ix, 31) as 
shall be of needed service to the Christian world. It com- 
mends its readers also to the epistles of St. Paul (2 Pet. iii, 
15, 16), whose wisdom, difficult to understand but harmoni- 
ous with the other Christian teachings, is set beside the 
other scriptures as authoritative and weighty for instruction. 

St. Jude, who calls himself *' a servant of Jesus. Christ 
and brother of James" (i, i), was, like James, not one of 
The Epistle the original apostles, but a later convert. He 
of Jude writes to Christians who are in dangers similar 

to those described in Second Peter, urging them ''to con- 
tend earnestly for the faith which was once for all delivered 
to the saints " (Jude 3). The danger which he confronts, 
however, presents itself not so much in the form of heresy 
and false doctrine as of impurity of life, — the unspeakable 
animalism and greed against which the early church had so 
strenuously to contend in a heathen world. He shows him- 
self a competent student of Scripture, not only of the ac- 
credited Old Testament writings but also of the apocalyptic 
writings which in the first century were so popular. He 
refers in one place to things mentioned in Daniel's visions 
and other works (Jude 9 ; cf. Dan. x, 13, 21 ; xii, i), and 
in another to the Book of Enoch (Jude 14 ; cf. Enoch i, 9). 

The doxology with which the epistle closes (vss. 24, 25) 
is justly regarded as one of the most beautiful ascriptions 
to be found in its whole class of literature. It is a fitting 
end to the epistolary part of the New Testament canon. 

1 See below, p. 664. 
[640] 



THE LITERATURE OF VALUES 

IV. The Legacy of the Beloved Disciple 

In our consideration of the gospels as completed, it will 
be remembered that we confined ourselves to the synoptic 
gospels, reserving the fourth gospel to what was deemed 
its more fitting place in the literature of values. We now 
take up this gospel, with other writings of the same author, 
considering them as an old-age legacy of one who was an 
intimate disciple of Jesus ; a legacy which, coming to men 
at a time when their spiritual need of it was greatest, may 
be regarded as the crown and culmination of the literature 
both of fact and of values. The writings of the beloved 
disciple are at once the simplest, the directest, and the 
profoundest in the whole range of Biblical literature. They 
consist of the fourth gospel, written as an eye-witness and 
ear-witness testimony, and three epistles, the first of which 
latter, being a kind of appendix to the gospel, has been 
aptly called the ''Postscript Commendatory."^ 



Who was the Beloved Disciple? "This is the disciple 
that beareth witness of these things, and wrote these things : 
and we know that his witness is true " (John xxi, 24). Thus 
is worded a certificate of authenticity attached to the end of 
the fourth gospel ; and the disciple thus referred to is re- 
peatedly called "the disciple whom Jesus loved " (John xiii, 
23 ; xix, 26 ; xx, 2, 3 ; xxi, 7, 20). He is nowhere mentioned 
by name ; but in 2 John i and 3 John i, which were written 
by the same person who wrote the gospel, he calls himself 
"the elder," and in the first epistle writes in the manner 
of a very old and revered man (cf. i John ii, i, 12, 13, 18). 
The certificate speaks of him as still living and bearing wit- 
ness, and yet as having written " these things " (namely, 
in the gospel). It seems most probable therefore that this 

1 By Bishop Lightfoot. 

[641] 



GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

voucher was given after the gospel was written and before 
the first epistle. It is evidently the author himself who 
wishes his name withheld, and though his name and claims 
are well known his wish is respected. 

Who this author was has of late years been vigorously 
called in question ; and this question, with accompanying 
problems of age and circumstances of writing, has made the 
so-called Johannine problem one of the most vexed enigmas 
of modern criticism. Let us consider what data we have for 
forming an opinion : data of tradition and of the Bible itself. 

I . Tradition has held since the last quarter of the second 
century that the author so obscurely referred to was John, 
one of the original twelve apostles ; and accordingly the 
gospel and the epistles have come down to us with his 
name. Some facts of John's life make the ascription nat- 
ural. John, the son of Zebedee, from some place on the Sea 
of Galilee, probably Bethsaida, was one of the earliest of 
Jesus' disciples (cf. Mark i, 19, for his call). His father, who 
carried on the fisher's trade, seems to have been a man in 
well-to-do circumstances (cf. Mark i, 20, '' hired servants "). 
His mother, who is most probably identified with Salome 
(cf. Matt, xxvii, 56, and Mark xv, 40, with John xix, 25), 
seems to have been the sister of Jesus' mother ; hence John 
and Jesus were first cousins. If so, John was also a kinsman 
of John the Baptist (cf . Luke i, 36) ; but whether he was ever 
a disciple of the Baptist is uncertain ; our identification of 
the unnamed disciple in John i, 40, is all we have to go by. 
He was a younger brother of James ; and the three, James 
and John and Peter, were the most intimate of Jesus' dis- 
ciples. These were the ones chosen to witness the most 
solemn events of the Master's ministry : the raising of 
Jairus' daughter (Mark v, 37), the transfiguration (Luke ix, 
28), and the midnight prayer in Gethsemane (Mark xiv, 33). 
Whenever John is mentioned he is associated with others, 
with James or Peter or both. Only one remark is recorded 

[642] 



THE LITERATURE OF VALUES 

of him alone, when the Master corrects his mistaken zeal in 
forbidding the casting out of demons by one who is not a 
disciple (Mark ix, 38 ; Luke ix, 49). It is much the same 
when, after Jesus' ascension, he becomes one of the chief 
apostles. He and Peter begin the Jerusalem ministry together 
(Acts iii, iv) ; but Peter is always the speaker and man 
of action, while John is the companion. The two brothers 
James and John were surnamed Boanerges by Jesus, that is, 
"sons of thunder" (Mark iii, 17), perhaps from their im- 
petuous and vehement temperament, in which they seemed to 
be alike. That they had political ambitions is indicated by 
their request for high distinctions in the coming kingdom 
(Mark X, 35-37, but perhaps the original idea was their 
mother's ; see Matt, xx, 20-21). These items are all that are 
given us of John the son of Zebedee, except by tradition. 
Whether the John of the Apocalypse (Rev. i, i, 4, 9) is the 
same person is quite conjectural. 

2. Other circumstances there are, however, about this 
mysterious ''disciple whom Jesus loved," which make his 
identification with John uncertain. To enumerate all these 
is of course not in place here. He is first mentioned, as if 
introduced as a new member of the circle, in John xiii, 23, 
where his intimacy with Jesus is indicated by the circum- 
stance of his reclining on Jesus' breast at table, the same 
circumstance being used again as his identifying token (xxi, 
20) when he is last mentioned. This would seem a rather 
strange way of introducing one who had been a prominent 
member of the circle from the beginning. It was to this 
disciple that Jesus on the cross committed the care of his 
mother (xix, 26) ; and the f.act that '' from that hour the 
disciple took her unto his own home " (vs. 27) would indi- 
cate that his home was in or near Jerusalem, whereas John's, 
on the Sea of Galilee, was ninety miles away. The fact that 
he was known to the high priest and procured admission for 
Peter to the court (xviii, 16), which it is hard to say of the 

[643] 



GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

Galilean John, is another indication in the same direction ; 
to which may be added that the whole gospel written by this 
disciple deals more with events in Judea than in Galilee. 
Finally we may note that when, at Jesus' arrest in the 
garden, the recognized band of disciples, perhaps at Jesus' 
request (cf . John xviii, 8), forsook him and fled (Matt, xxvi, 
56), though Peter afterwards '' followed him afar off " (Matt, 
xxvi, 58), this disciple alone remained with his Master till 
the end and saw the piercing of his side with the spear 
(John xix, 35 ; cf. i John v, 6). It is impossible, with the 
data we have, to trace these circumstances to John the son 
of Zebedee ; though, to be sure, they are not conclusive 
against him. 

As the case for the John of tradition is felt to be less 
decisive, the field is left more open for surmise, if plausible 
Grounds for ^^^^ ^^^ forthcoming, as to who the beloved dis- 
a New ciple really was. A circumstance of considerable 

urmise weight scems to the present writer to make for 
the identification with a person to whom hitherto little atten- 
tion has been paid. It will have been noted that '' the dis- 
ciple who wrote these things" does not mention himself as 
the beloved of Jesus until he narrates the events of the last 
supper. In giving the account of the raising of Lazarus, 
a few days before, he adduces testimony from the sisters 
(John xi, 3), from the Jews (vs. 36), and from himself 
(vs. 5), to the exceptional love of Jesus. for Lazarus; a fact 
the more remarkable because only one other case is men- 
tioned, and this only casual, where Jesus is represented as 
bestowing individual love (Mark x, 21). If, acting on this 
clue, we postulate Lazarus of .Bethany as the author of the 
fourth gospel, many things, such as his residence at or near 
Jerusalem, his services to the Galileans when they were 
there, his acquaintance with leading Jews of the capital and 
their ways, and his predominant attention to the events of 
the Judean ministry, are naturally and lucidly explained. 

[644] 



THE LITERATURE OF VALUES 

We could add data, and especially a general tone of con- 
sciousness, of a more mystic sort, suitable to one who, hav- 
ing been recalled from death, had thenceforth a new attitude 
toward the unseen ; such as the curious notion among his 
friends that he would never die (John xxi, 23), and his 
uniform treatment, both in gospel and epistle, of eternal 
life as a present thing. Further considerations, however, for 
or against, may be left to the more intuitive and spiritually 
minded thinker, to whom their weight and reality can best 
appeal.^ 

II 

The Story Told Once More. It was in the old age of the 
Beloved Disciple, when the facts of Jesus' ministry would 
be recalled from two generations of time, and when a long 
period of matured reflection and interpretation intervened, 
that the world received the fourth gospel, the profoundest 
and yet simplest account of Jesus' personality and work that 
there is in existence. This lateness of date does not make 
against its authenticity as a record of Jesus' life. We all 
know how much more exact and vivid early life-memories 
are than later ones, especially if the events remembered 
have had a determining effect on the person's whole life. 
At the same time long conversance with such memories, 
and comparison of them with later ideas and conditions, 
tend to reduce them to simpler and clearer terms. The fact, 
which as embodied in teaching or event may at the time of 
it have been hard to understand, has with growth of years 

1 See note, p. 576, above. For the broaching of this Lazarus question, see 
article by James Jones, B. Sc, in The Interpreter, July, 1914. Professor 
H. B. Swete thinks that the young man mentioned in Mark x, 21, subse- 
quently returned and became known as the beloved disciple ; %&q. Journal of 
Theological Studies, July, 191 6. Professor Garvie thinks that this disciple 
was himself the householder in whose upper room the last supper was 
held; see " Studies in the Inner Life of Jesus," p. 351. These facts shew 
how uncertain the case of John the son of Zebedee has come to be held. 

[645] 



GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

become luminous with meanings not sensed before ; or, • in 
other words, has revealed its real and permanent values. 
Such is the unique distinction of the fourth gospel. It is 
written with the avowed purpose of giving the supreme 
values of the great Christian fact : to make the men of a 
later time see the divinity of Christ as it is and commit 
themselves to it. To this end the author does not profess 
to give all the facts of Jesus' ministry, but only such selec- 
tion of facts as makes for his purpose ; facts so proportioned 
and coordinated as to make his work an exposition by narra- 
tion. *' Many other signs," he writes, " did Jesus in the pres- 
ence of his disciples, which are not written in this book : 
but these are written, that ye may believe that Jesus is the 
Christ, the Son of God ; and that believing ye may have 
life in his name " (John xx, 30, 31). 

Note. The Author's Purpose. Browning has depicted in a masterly 
way the genesis and purpose of the fourth gospel, in his poem " A 
Death in the Desert " ; which represents the aged John, as his dying 
act, explaining how he retold the life of Christ to meet the gainsayers 
of his late day: 

I never thought to call down fire on such, 

Or, as in wonderful and early days, 

Pick up the scorpion, tread the serpent dumb ; 

But patient stated much of the Lord's life 

Forgotten or misdelivered, and let it work ; 

Since much that at the first, in deed and word, 

Lay simply and sufficiently exposed, 

Had grown (or else my soul was grown to match. 

Fed through such years, familiar with such light, 

Guarded and guided still to see and speak) 

Of new significance and fresh result ; 

What first were guessed as points, I now knew stars. 

And named them in the Gospel I have writ.^ 

For thfe allusions in the passage, of. Luke ix, 54; Mark xvi, r8; Acts 
xxviii, 3-6, The whole spiritual and literary process, wherein the 
divine revelation and the human intuition are alike honored, is here 
indicated. 

1 Browning, " A Death in the Desert," 11. 163-175. 

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THE LITERATURE OF VALUES 

As belonging to the literature both of fact and of values, the 
fourth gospel calls for brief consideration in these two aspects. 

There was no occasion at the time this gospel was written 
to retell the whole story of Jesus' ministry, as the synoptic 
Its Contribu- gospels were already long current and standard ; 
tion of Fact ylov was the author minded to correct erroneous 
statements of the synoptics, though in a few cases he silently 
does so. His object evidently was to supplement them by 
giving some parts and aspects of Jesus' ministry which they 
had not had so good opportunity, or ability, to narrate. The 
most important of this supplementary matter relates to Jesus' 
ministry in Judea, which he is represented to have con- 
ducted in connection with his visits to the Jewish feasts at 
Jerusalem. The other gospels are almost entirely confined 
to his ministry in Galilee and among the common people ; 
this more predominantly to his teaching at the capital and 
among the leaders of religion and culture : a fact which may 
in part account for its more esoteric and as it were scholarly 
tone, and for Jesus' almost defiant assertion of his divine 
warrant and claims, as against a stubborn and unspiritual 
educated class.^ Without this account of his contact with 
the culture and bigotry of his time our idea of the rounded 
completeness of his ministry would be essentially lacking ; 
with it his work is balanced and proportioned as we should 
expect so momentous a work to be. 

It is from this gospel that we get the best notion of the 
length as well as of the distribution of Jesus' ministry ; this 
because the feast seasons, at which he made his periodical 
visits to Jerusalem, form a chronological series of landmarks, 
from which it is deduced that his public ministry, for whose 
measurement the synoptists furnish only scant data, lasted 
somewhat over three years. And as for its personal relations, 
we are in this gospel brought in contact not only with the 

1 This is considered under "His Utterances in Divine Character"; see 
preceding, pp. 561 f. 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

Jewish leaders whose antipathy to Jesus was so violent, but 
also with the more sf)iritually minded ones who after his 
ascension would form an important element of loyalty and 
learning in the years of the early Christian cause. 

Nor was it among the leaders alone and in public 
encounters, nor even predominantly so, that he is repre- 
sented as moving and ministering. This gospel, if more 
mystic and sublime than the others, is also more intimately 
human, more companionable, as it were more domestic. It 
is this gospel that records Jesus' attendance at the wed- 
ding in Cana (ii, i-ii), his conversations with Nicodemus 
(iii, 1-2 1) and the woman of Samaria (iv, 1—42), his inter- 
views with the invalid at Bethesda (v, 2-18) and with the 
man born blind (ix, 1-41), his reception of the Greeks who 
came to worship at the feast (xii, 20-32), and his friendship 
with the family at Bethany, where he raised Lazarus from 
the dead (xi, 1-44) and where at a supper given him one 
of the sisters of Lazarus anointed his feet (xii, 1-8). Thus, 
in portraying the highest Being that ever walked our earth 
as the most human too, this gospel furnishes an important 
balancing elemerrt to the synoptics. 

Unlike the matter-of-fact consciousness of the synoptics, 

and the dialectic disposition of St. Paul, the tone of this 

ffospel is eminently intuitive and penetrative : 

Its Realistic *->'■■' i 

Sense of the work of a mind which, without having to pass 
Divine through intermediate stages of premise and in- 

ference, sees the bearings and ultimate reaches 
of truth as it were visually and at once. Such a mind does 
not argue, it asserts ; its view of truth is not relative but 
absolute. This trait of it, uncommonly keen by nature, was 
doubtless enhanced by the long reflection and seasoning 
through which until extreme old age the author's memory 
of things passed. Of him we may say, more truly than did 
Matthew Arnold of Sophocles, that it was he 
Who saw life steadily, and saw it whole ; 
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THE LITERATURE OF VALUES 

only, that life which he saw was embodied in one supreme 
Personahty, whose Hfe was the hght of men. 

Hence the hfe of Jesus is in this gospel portrayed not 
as common and bewildered men first saw it, or as it appears 
from a matter-of-fact level, but as a man of intuitive genius 
came to realize its inner and perfected meanings. Beyond 
other Scripture books this retold story, with its pendant the 
First Epistle of John, is the great summarizer, the great 
definer of terms. It begins by introducing Jesus not as a 
child nor as a consecrated minister but as ''the Word," 
which from the beginning expressed the thought and spirit 
of God ; which created all things ; which becoming flesh 
and dwelling among men was the light of their true life 
and gave them power to become sons of God. From the 
moment he is thus transcendently introduced, however, the 
events of his ministry are narrated not allegorically but in 
such realistic terms as connote the observation of an eye- 
witness, yet with such simple sublimity as beseems the 
divine personality and wisdom and power. No other gospel 
is made up so uniformly of Jesus' words and acts in divine 
character ; yet in none is .the manhood more self-consistent 
and homogeneous in the realistic sense of its derivation 
from the divine. 

As we have seen, the certificate which at the end of the 
gospel identifies the disciple whom Jesus .loved with the one 
Its Author's who '' beareth witness of these things and wrote 
Personality these things" adds the words, ''we know that 
his witness is true" (John xxi, 24). How did the writers 
of this affidavit know .? It does not seem likely that they 
were aged contemporaries of his, themselves eyewitnesses 
of the gospel facts ; rather, it would seem, there was some- 
thing in his personality, and perhaps in his experience, 
which was an absolute voucher for the truth of his state- 
ments. The question is important because of the well-meant 
but impersonal criticism which the book has encountered. 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

Its style is so different from that of the synoptics, and 
bears the marks of so much maturer thought, that it did 
not seem, on critical grounds, to deal with the actual words 
and deeds of the Jesus whom the synoptists portray. The 
difficulty is a real one ; but to meet it negatively raises 
a problem greater than it solves. If the words and works 
of Jesus here recorded are not substantially authentic (and 
the criticism hinges on this), we must needs find an author 
who could have invented them and he must have a mind 
and personality of the Christ caliber. The spirit of the book 
is utterly inconsistent with being a literary tour de force 
manufactured either out of some writer's head or out of an 
evolved Christian consciousness. The intrinsic character of 
the words and acts makes them the despair of literary inven- 
tion. The line of least resistance, it seems, is to accept, as 
the certificate does, a personality specially gifted and pre- 
pared, who could so remember and assimilate the deeper 
and diviner elements of Jesus' revelation of himself as to 
reproduce them accurately and adequately. It is to the 
unnamed author's personality that we must look, to his 
exceptional spiritual and intuitional endowments. 

What these endowments were, or at least their spring 
and impulsion, he himself reticently intimates in his charac- 
terization of himself as ''one. of his disciples, whom Jesus 
loved" (John xiii, 23). It was by love that the Master's 
inmost heart was revealed to him ; it was by an answering 
love (for love is a reciprocal thing) that he could absorb 
and retain the things of Christ which went so much deeper 
than others could see. The Master had said, on his last 
meeting with his disciples, " I have yet many things to say 
unto you, but ye cannot bear them now" (John xvi, 12); 
he had also said of the Spirit of truth whom he would send, 
*' He shall take of mine, and shall declare it unto you " 
(vs. 14). This disciple it was who remembered these words, 
who impressed them on a heart bound by a peculiar love 

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THE LITERATURE OF VALUES 

to that of Jesus, and who when men could best bear them 
and most needed them was spared to give them to the 
world. It was the world's greatest example of what Carlyle 
has noted of an English biographer, " inspired only by love, 
and the recognition and vision which love can lend." And 
the result we may put also in Carlyle's words, except that 
we must heighten his idea of nature : '' That . . . Work of 
his is as a picture by one of Nature's own Artists ; the 
best possible resemblance of a Reality ; like the very image 
thereof in a clear mirror. Which indeed it was : let but 
the mirror be clear, this is the great point ; the picture must 
and will be genuine." ^ 

Thus, while the author of the fourth gospel has en- 
deavored to efface his personality, so far as self-assertion 
is concerned, the wonderful insight of it and its realistic 
vision of the divine are evident in every line, molding it 
by the mind of Christ. Other traits there are also, pointing 
to a still more intimate sharing of the Master's purpose and 
thought ; which, however, we will not go into here.^ 

Ill 

The " Postscript Commendatory.** This designation, which 
has been given by Bishop Lightfoot to the First Epistle 
of John, fits its character and purpose well. It is a kind 
of companion piece to the fourth gospel, but whether writ- 
ten before or after is not quite apparent, and couched in 
words such as a very old man, full of wonderful memories 
and the ideas of life derived therefrom, would write to friends 
and disciples so much younger that they are regarded as 
"little children" (cf. i John ii, i, 12, 13, 18, etc.) needing 
guidance in the simplest but at the same time the largest 
and most vital values. It starts from the same realistic 
sense of Jesus' divine nature which we have noted in the 

1 Carlyle's Essay on Boswell's Johnson, W^orks, Vol. XXVIII, p. 75. 

2 Connected with the " New Surmise " ; see preceding, p. 644. 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

gospel ; labors, indeed, to express it in the most explicit 
terms :• " That which was from the beginning, that which 
we have heard, that which we have seen with our eyes, 
that which we beheld, and our hands handled, concerning 
the Word of life, — and the life was manifested, and we 
have seen, and bear witness, and declare unto you the 
life, the eternal life, which was with the Father, and was 
manifested unto us " (i John i, i, 2). As the object of the 
gospel was to induce belief (John xx, 31), the object of this 
" postscript commendatory " is to induce fellowship in the 
Father and the Son, and the communal joy that results 
therefrom. '' That which we have seen and heard declare 
we unto you also, that ye also may have fellowship with us ; 
yea, and our fellowship is with the Father, and with his 
Son Jesus Christ ; and these things we write, that our joy 
may be made full" (i John i, 3, 4). It is as if the " disciple 
whom Jesus loved," who had received such unusual access 
of divine light and truth, were minded to make every man 
a sharer with him in the same, and so unite the world of 
Christian believers in one spirit and fellowship. ''If we 
walk in the light," he says, ''as he is in the light, we have 
fellowship one with another " (i, 7). 

Note. Ii^s Occasion. As a modern description of its occasion, 
we may again quote the words of Browning, who puts the epistles of 
John after the Apocalypse (which he ascribes to him ; see next chapter) 
and before his gospel but, like the gospel, in his old age : 

Then, for my time grew brief, no message more, 

No call to write again, I found a way, 

And, reasoning from my knowledge, merely taught 

Men should, for love's sake, in love's strength believe ; 

Or I would pen a letter to a friend 

And urge the same as friend, nor less nor more : 

Friends said I reasoned rightly, and believed. 

These words have in mind not only the first epistle of John but the 
second and third, written by " the elder " respectively to " the elect lady 
and her children " (2 John i), and to " Gains the beloved " (3 John i); 
but the description applies equally to this first epistle. 

[652] 



THE LITERATURE OF VALUES 

Though anonymous, the epistle leaves no reasonable doubt 
that it is by the author of the gospel. As a kind of circular 
Substance of writing intended for the same readers as the gos- 
its Message pel^ it does not have occasion for the conventional 
epistolary address and salutation. Its background is the 
truth brought to light in the gospel story, and it is written 
as if the author were fresh from his intimate conversance 
with the life of Jesus and its deep meanings. 

This epistle uses the substance of the gospel truth in two 
ways : as an antidote to certain false teachings that are 
creeping into the churches and as a summary of all that 
is requisite for eternal life. It is thus controversial — in its 
absolute way — as well as interpretative. 

I . Two heresies were endangering the purity of the 
church in the aged disciple's day. One was that of the 
Nicolaitans (mentioned by name in Rev. ii, 6, 14, 15), who 
from a false idea of the sinlessness of Christians and the 
vileness of the flesh were allowing themselves to indulge in 
unrestrained licentiousness, as if it were of no moral signifi- 
cance. Against this heresy, which was rampant in Asia 
Minor, his condemnation is emphatic and unsparing (see i, 
5 ; ii, 6, 15, 17 ; iii, 3-10). Equally so is his condemnation 
of another heresy, introduqed by Cerinthus (the name does 
not occur in Scripture), whom he designates as Antichrist. 
This man had a theory which denied the divine nature of 
Jesus, distinguishing the historical Jesus from the tran- 
scendent Christ, and thus dissolving his personality in phil- 
osophic speculation. Against this the writer, fresh from his 
memories of the Master, opposes strenuous opposition, in- 
sisting on the truth that Jesus is the Christ, who has come 
in the flesh (see ii, 18-23 ; iv, 1-6; 13-15 ; v, 1-12). It 
may be seen how eminently fitting, at the late day when the 
epistle was written, this testimony of the beloved disciple 
who had seen and heard and touched Jesus was, in order 
to meet the newer needs. 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

2. As interpretative of the gospel truth, the epistle evinces 
a notable purpose to resolve its vital principles into plain 
terms and to propose many simple but searching tests of 
truth or falsity in life and faith. These tests, beginning with 
''Hereby we know," or ''perceive" (cf. di, 3, 5 ; iii, 16, 19, 
24 ; iv, 2, 6, 13), are a very characteristic feature. The key- 
note of the epistle is love. It is this writer alone, " the dis- 
ciple whom Jesus loved," of all the New Testament writers, 
who says plainly that God is love, and who makes the sweep- 
ing deduction that he who loves abides in God and God in 
him (iv, 8, 16), — an assertion that it requires a daring 
thinker to make. The test of the genuineness of such love 
is our love for our brother whom we have seen rather than 
of God whom we have not seen (iv, 20) ; that is, the com- 
pleted fellowship for the sake of which the epistle is written. 
On the indications and tests of this Christian love the 
author's language is very absolute and emphatic. As if it 
were the one " word " in which the whole literature of the 
Bible is concentrated, he commends love as the new com- 
mandment, comprising the whole duty of man (ii, 8). 

The second and third epistles of John, both very short, 
are addressed to private persons.. To "the elect lady and 
The other her children," who are addressed in the second 
Epistles epistle, he gives his favorite exhortation, " that 
we love one another" (vs. 5), and warns against counte- 
nancing or receiving any deceiver or " antichrist " who walks 
not in the spirit of this fundamental virtue (vss. 7, 10). 
Gaius the beloved, who is addressed in the third epistle, is 
commended for receiving and aiding some itinerant Chris- 
tian teachers, in contrast to a certain Diotrephes, apparently 
a domineering layman in the church, who had been morose 
and inhospitable toward such. Both of these epistles, though 
addressed to individuals, seem intended also for church 
counsels; and in both the writer calls himself "the elder." 

[654] 



CHAPTER XII 

THE RESURGENCE OF PROPHECY 
[Near the end of the first century] 

PROPHECY was the most vital and spiritual element 
of the Old Testament literature. It was through the 
prophets that, as the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews 
says, God spoke " by divers portions and in divers manners " 
to the fathers. We have seen how the literary prophecy 
took its rise and ran its course in Israel.^ Its era of about 
three centuries, from near the middle of the eighth to the 
middle of the fifth century b.c, was involved with that most 
momentous era of the people's history during which they 
suffered dissolution as a political state and reinstatement as 
a church ; in which reinstatement the majority pf the people 
were dispersed among the nations while their religious and 
educational capital remained at Jerusalem. In all this period 
before the dispersion the main object of prophetic activity, 
most clearly expressed in the Second Isaiah, was to commit 
the Jewish race to their ordained destiny as " the Servant of 
Jehovah," a conscience-bearing and missionary race. After- 
ward, however, prophecy, in this more specific sense, gradu- 
ally subsided. The people became more interested in their 
past than in their future. The lack of prophetic vision, the 
dearth of the forward look, came to be deeply felt and de- 
plored by the devout. '' We see not our signs," mourned one 
of the psalmists ; '' there is no more any prophet ; neither is 
there among us any that knoweth how long " (Psa. Ixxiv, 9). 
The missionary zeal had given way to exclusiveness and. 

1 See Book I, Chapters IV-VI. 
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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

racial pride. The age of prophecy had been succeeded by 
an age of Mosaic legahsm, and scribal interpretation, and 
religious prescription. 

But in all the old literary prophecies there was a larger 
strain of prediction than the immediate crisis or issue de- 
inherited Hianded. From the specific message with which 
Apocalyptic he was charged, which dealt with the troubled 
emen s interests of his time, each prophet looked forward 
to an epoch of solution far beyond, to some aspect of a 
coming golden age, or new order of things, when God 
would bring judgment and deliverance, when a new spiritual 
covenant would be established, and when God's ultimate 
purpose in the world would be realized. We see touches of 
this peculiar strain of prophecy in Joel's picture of the "' val- 
ley of decision " (Joel iii, 2, 14-17) ; in Isaiah and Micah's 
vision of " the mountain of the Lord's house " (Isa. ii, 2-4 ; 
Mic. iv, 1-3), and in the apocalyptic songs and chapters 
which accentuate the several stages of the Vision of Isaiah 
(Isa. xii ; xxiv-xxvii ; xxxv) ; in the vision of the king reign- 
ing in righteousness (Isa. xxxii, 1-8) ; in Jeremiah's era of 
a new covenant (Jer. xxxi, 31-34 ; xxxii, 40) ; in Zechariah's 
vision of the fate of Jerusalem (Zech. xiv, 1-8) ; in Ezekiel's 
vision of waters issuing from the restored sanctuary (Ezek. 
xlvii, 1-12) ; and in numerous other passages. The culmi- 
nation of these is reached in the Second Isaiah's prediction 
of ''new heavens and a new earth"- (Isa. Ixv, 17-25 ; Ixvi, 
22, 23). The prophecy of this type is by scholars called 
apocalyptic, from the Greek word apokalupsis, '' a dis- 
closure " ; denoting a revelation of something before un- 
known to men and undiscoverable by mere human intuition.^ 
Many predictions relating to imminent issues in the national 
or world-movement of things might be like an intuitive 
statesmanship interpreting historical and spiritual forces ; 
apocalyptic vision, however, could come only from the mind 

. 1 Cf. above, pp. 513-515. 

[656] 



THE RESURGENCE OF PROPHECY 

of God, revealing eternal purposes beyond the scope of politi- 
cal or religious history. This apocalyptic element furnishes 
in all stages of prophecy, as it were a background and far 
vista, giving prophecy an enduring value when its specific occa- 
sion is past and keeping the ultimate hope of Israel alive. 

While these primitive apocalyptic elements were stored, 
as it were, at the back of the people's mind as a prophecy 
The y^^ unfulfilled, they were couched in too broad 

Quickened and general terms to have a grip on men's 
magma ion invagination. They were stated, but not pictured ; 
besides, they needed some shock of sharp experience to 
precipitate them from solution. The apocalyptic visualiza- 
tion, as it appears, was introduced by the Book of Daniel 
(cir. 165 B.C.), which, written to revive the people's hopes 
at the time of the Maccabean crisis and persecution, pur- 
ports to give certain symbolic visions vouchsafed to' Daniel 
in the time of Nebuchadnezzar and his Medo-Persian suc- 
cessors. These visions relate to the coming kingdom of 
heaven, which was destined to subdue and survive the king- 
doms of the earth. They speak also of '' One like unto a 
son of man," to whom " was given dominion arid glory, and 
a kingdom, that all the peoples, nations, and languages 
should serve him : his dominion is an everlasting dominion, 
which shall not pass away, and his kingdom that which shall 
not be destroyed" (Dan. vii, 13, 14). To these visions are 
appended dates, reckoned in cryptic terms, for their fulfill- 
ment ; which dates, ever since they were given, have roused 
no end of curiosity and conjecture. The exact nature of the 
issue, however, is left undefined. ''And I heard," says the 
author, " but I understood not ; then said I, ' O, my lord, 
what shall be the issue of these things ? ' And he said, 
' Go thy way, Daniel ; for the words are shut up and sealed 
till the time of the end ' " (Dan. xii, 8, 9). 

With its picturesque and curiosity-provoking symbols, 
the Book of Daniel liberated to a remarkable degree the 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

Jewish imagination ; giving rise to a flowering of apocalyptic 
literature, in which was more fancy than sober prophecy. Up 
till near the destruction of Jerusalem a.d. 70 this species of 
literature flourished, furnishing a popular imaginative release 
from the austerities of the law and the potterings of the 
scribes. There were vivid descriptions of visits to the unseen 
world, of the doings of angels good and bad, of the spectac- 
ular day of judgment, of the all-conquering king, and the 
like. Out of it all came one useful result, however : a great 
quickening of the popular imagination and such a concrete 
expectation of the coming kingdom and its Messiah as pre- 
vious prophecy had not awakened. It was this expectation, 
with its crude or fantastic accompaniments, which, as we 
have seen, Jesus had at his coming to meet and reduce to 
sanity and correct ; while at the same time all that was sound 
and permanent in it might be retained. 

Such is the honorable distinction that Jesus gave to his 
herald, John the Baptist (Matt, xi, 9). The Christian era, 
A t>rophet, which John came to announce, was rather one 
and More of fulfillment than of prophecy. Prophecy's long 
work was done ; and God, who in so many ways and por- 
tions had spoken by the prophets, was now speaking 'by a 
Son (Heb. i, i). John was more than a prophet, because 
he was the messenger of fulfillment. 

To give his message, however, he paid little if any atten- 
tion to the popular apocalyptic, using as he did merely the 
current terms which answered to the kindled expectation of 
his time. He harked back rather to. the primitive austerities 
of prophecy : imitating Elijah in manner, in whom prophetic 
methods were typical, and making use of the older ideas of 
the Second Isaiah and Malachi. On the basis of these he 
met the popular expectation so far as to announce, "The 
kingdom is at hand ; . . . after me cometh One . who is 
mightier than I" (cf. Matt, iii, 2, 11). Then, identifying 
Jesus as that Mightier One, he continued to demand the 

[658] 



THE RESURGENCE OF PROPHECY 

repentance by which alone the kingdom could be prepared for, 
until martyrdom put an end to his preaching. Jesus too, in 
his turn, beginning with the same call to repentance, simpli- 
fied his message by an appeal to and adoption of the older 
prophecy, and setting himself to the practical but at the 
same time spiritual details of fulfillment. So it went on till 
near the close of his ministry. Prophecy, in its more spa- 
cious sense of apocalyptic, would have its due resurgence, 
but the time had not yet come. The mind of men must 
first be educated to realize and believe it. 

I. Toward the End of the Era 

Among the apocalyptic ideas prevalent when Jesus entered 
upon his ministry was naturally the thought that the coming 
new order of things would be the end of the old. The great 
event was to be a turning point in history, whereat one 
era would reveal itself as outworn and finished and another 
would be inaugurated with the pomp and glory befitting 
so momentous a change. To the Jewish imagination this 
transition was to be catastrophic. All nature and history 
would suddenly feel it, and in -a tremendous revolution which 
none could fail to see the new order of things would emerge. 
To them its meaning also was mainly political. The Roman 
Empire, now so universal and despotic, would collapse, and 
the Jewish race with its divinely ordained religion and polity 
would come into its own as the ruler of the world. 

The end of the age would therefore be not a decay and 
death but a consummation ; when spiritual forces, long hid- 
den in the old order and suppressed, would burst' forth into 
power and glory. This idea of a coming catastrophe and 
splendor was not peculiar to the Jews. Among the heathen 
also something like it was prevalent, though of course they 
did not connect it with the fortunes of the Jewish race. 

We have seen that Jesus' task was to meet and temper 
and correct the ideas with which the prophetic soul of his 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

age was charged.^ It was his opportunity, but also his tre- 
mendous problem, a problem to be solved only by super- 
human genius. And of all the ideas then prevailing, ideas 
so beset with fancies and vagaries and so variously colored 
with crude judgments, the grand culmination was this con- 
cept of end and beginning : what and of what nature the 
transition would be, and how brought about. Jesus must 
accommodate his speech to its terms, must keep his hearers 
with him in the same realm of imagery, and yet withal 
must gradually create a new vocabulary and atmosphere 
congruous with his vast purpose. Above all he must begin 
with the primal spiritual forces of human nature and free 
them from alloy. And nothing so reveals his consummate 
wisdom as the steady, consistent way in which throughout 
his earthly ministry he dealt with the vital principles of his 

problem. 

I 

The Presage in Jesus' Words. He did not say much 
about the consummation of the age, or, as it is commonly 
translated, the end of the world, until near the close of his 
ministry ; and then what he .said left the matter as enig- 
matic in one way as it was clear in another. In two of his 
parables, indeed, the parable of the tares and the parable of 
the sweep-net as reported by Matthew (Matt, xiii, 39, 49), 
occurs ' the expression '' the consummation of the age " 
{sunteleia tou aidnos) ; but it is to be noted that in the gos- 
pels the term is peculiar to Matthew, who may have used 
it as a term current among Christians when his gospel was 
written. In his report of Jesus' eschatological discourse 
the expression occurs again in the disciples' inquiry, " What 
shall be the sign of thy coming, and of the end of the 
world } " (Matt, xxiv, 3), where also the word for " coming " 
{paronsia, "presence") is used for the only. time in the 
gospels. In Mark's report of the discourse, which being 

1 See " The Christ-Problem," pp. 535 ff. above. 

[660] 



THE RESURGENCE OF PROPHECY 

older is presumably nearer to Jesus' exact words, the ques- 
tion is, '' When will these things be ? and what will be 
the sign when all these things are about to be fulfilled ? " 
(Mark xiii, 4). The connecting of this discourse with the 
consummation and the parousia would seem to have been 
a deduction of the early church, to whom these ideas had 
become a matter of course, though Jesus' actual words 
may have embodied only an indirect presage. Still, a true 
presage it was, which from the event with which it was 
immediately concerned would, as time w^ent on, enlarge 
into a prophecy of the greater consummation beyond. For 
the whole discourse, with its slightly variant forms, see Matt. 
xxiv, Mark xiii, Luke xxi ; that of Mark being probably the 
most primitive. 

The occasion of this eschatological discourse of Jesus 

seems at first thought to have been casual enough. After 

a day of teachins: in the Temple, as he went forth 

Its Occasion ■' ° . 

to the Mount of Olives, whence the view of the 
edifice appeared in greatest grandeur, one of the disciples 
called his attention to the wonders of its architecture. It 
was, indeed, as rebuilt by Herod, the pride and boast of the 
Jews, who doubtless were as confident of its permanence as 
they had been in the days of Jeremiah (see Jer. vii, 1-15). 
But he had already cleansed the Temple court of its 
traders and exchangers (Mark xi, 15-18; John ii, 14-20), 
using J.eremiah's words of reproof because it had become 
so worldly and commercialized (cf. Jer. vii, 11). It was his 
symbolic way of saying, as was said later, that judgment 
must "begin at the house of God" (i Pet. iv, 17). And 
now his answer to the disciples' admiration is, '' Seest thou 
these great buildings ? there shall not be left here one 
stone upon another, which shall not be thrown down 
(Mark xiii, 2). 

Such a prediction about the Temple, and especially any 
implied disparagement of it, would be to the Jews almost 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

equivalent to blasphemy. We see this in the way they 
mocked him when he hung upon the cross (Mark xiv, 58 ; 
XV, 29), and in the charge they brought against him at his 
trial, — a distorted reminiscence of his words when he first 
cleansed the Temple, as recorded in the fourth gospel (see 
John ii, 19, 20). The truth is, Jesus' attitude toward the 
Temple service touched the nation in a vital spot. It re- 
minded them, to their discomfort, that they could not play 
fast and loose with conscience ; their long heritage was too 
precious to be thus made sterile. 

Jesus' prophecy of events to come, called forth by his 
remark about the Temple, was both specific and general. 
Its The specific event which was immediately identi- 

Substance f^g^j ^j^j^ ^j^g destruction of the T.emple was the 
destruction of Jerusalem and the break-up of the Jewish 
state, which occurred under Vespasian, when his son and 
general Titus besieged and demolished both city and Temple 
A.D. 70, forty years after these words were uttered. Of 
this event which, to the consciousness of disciples still un- 
educated in Christian experience, would be equivalent to the 
end of the age, the -prophecy, ''This generation shall not 
pass away until all these things shall be accomplished " 
(Mark xiii, 30) came literally to pass. The Hebrew and 
Jewish order of things, of which the Temple was the central 
symbol, was doomed, and that was the only order they could 
yet realize. 

But all Jesus' descriptions of that catastrophe were preg- 
nant with a larger and more spiritual meaning. The event 
would be, as it were, the clearing of the ground for the 
building of an order whose meanings would be universal 
and eternal. This larger prophecy is blended with the more 
specific, so that many terms of the two are interchangeable ; 
but it still has to be expressed in conceptions which the 
disciples can understand. ''After that tribulation," Jesus 
says, they shall " see the Son of Man coming in clouds 

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THE RESURGENCE OF PROPHECY 

with great power and glory " (Mark xiii, 24-26). It is the 
same prediction that he makes two or three days later, in 
his confession of his Messiahship to the high priest (see 
Mark xiv, 61, 62). It is put in apocalyptic terms, accom- 
panied by such portents of nature as the older prophets had 
associated with world events ; it visualizes things, for those 
conceptions are not yet of the spirit but of the imagination. 
That is the mold in which the current idea of future things 
has shaped itself. Its substance, which later events have 
progressively verified, i's that the personality of Jesus, identi- 
fied with the idealized Christ, is destined to be the re-living 
and triumphant power of the world and of the ages. " And 
then shall he send forth the angels, and shall gather together 
his elect from the four winds, from the uttermost part of the 
earth to the uttermost part of heaven " (Mark xiii, 27). The 
completed event will be one in which not the shifting history 
of a state or nation alone but earth and heayen, human and 
divine,, present and hereafter, will be involved and united. 

II 

In the Light of Common Day. It is to be noted that to 
neither of the questions raised by the disciples (Mark xiii, 4) 
does Jesus return a specific answer. He neither tells them 
when these things will be nor what shall be the sign. It 
is another instance of what we have noticed in all the large 
forecasts of the future : a foreshortened prophecy, in which 
the essential is kept clear from the incidental. To the 
former question his answer is, '' Of that day and hour know- 
eth no one ; not even the angels in heaven, neither the 
Son, but the Father" (Mark xiii, 32). To the latter ques- 
tion he replies not by a sign but by an analogy, such an 
analogy as the wise can gather from the familiar phenomenon 
of the fig-tree, '' when her branch is now become tender, and 
putteth forth its leaves," — the natural prophecy of summer 
(Mark xiii, 28, 29). It is an appeal to men's clarified spiritual 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

sense. Meanwhile his call is not to speculations but to prac- 
tical insight and duties. The disciples are to beware of false 
Christs and deceivers ; are to distrust any who say, '' Lo, 
here is the Christ " or '' Lo, there " ; are to take trials as 
they come, and discount them as in the necessary order of 
things ; are to be faithful stewards of their divinely given 
trust; and are to be always ready. "And what I say unto 
you I say unto all, Watch " (Mark xiii, 37). 

These sane and steadying counsels became the staple of 
the apostolic teaching (see, for example, St. Paul's earliest 
epistles, those to the Thessalonians). Their influence shaped * 
the personal character which made the early Christian com- 
munities a notable contrast to the world around them. When 
we reflect that the gospels as we have them were not 
written till after the Pauline and other epistles, the evident 
effect here noted provokes the conclusion that this prophecy 
of Jesus must have been circulated and well known from 
the time it was uttered. It is, indeed, thought to have been 
current among the churches as a kind of tract apart from 
the gospels in which we read it, and to have been incor- 
porated in the completed gospels afterward. ^ 

II. The Revelation of John 

The resurgence of prophecy in its most pronounced 
apocalyptic ^ form is evidenced in the last book of the Bible, 
written late in the first century a.d., and entitled "The Reve- 
lation {apokalupsis) of Jesus Christ, which God gave him, 
to show unto his servants things which must shortly come 
to pass." It was written by " his servant John," an exile in 
Patmos ; but whether this was the apostle John the son of 
Zebedee is uncertain. It is written in a vein somewhat similar 
to that of the fourth gospel and the Epistles of John, which 
fact has caused a general belief that the same author wrote all 

1 See Burkitt, " The Gospel History and its Transmission," pp. 62, 63. 

2 For the beginnings of apocalyptic prophecy, see above, p. 147, note 2. 

[664] • 



THE RESURGENCE OF PROPHECY 

the works at different periods of his Ufe. Like the gospel, 
it views Jesus as the unique Son of God ; and Hke the uni- 
form Christian teachings it regards him as not yet come in 
the fullness of his kingdom and power, but as revealing in 
mystic and symbolic language the manner and accompani- 
ments of his coming, and the final things after the turmoils 
and tribulations of history are over. 

Note. Its Supposed Relationship to John's Works. Browning 
thus explains its relation, as purely reported prophecy, to the general 
teaching of the evangelist John, whom he regards as its author : 

Since I, whom Christ's mouth taught, was bidden teach, 

I went, for many years, about the world, 

Saying, " It was so ; so I heard and saw," 

Speaking as the case asked : and men believed. 

Afterward came the message to myself 

In Patmos isle ; I was not bidden teach, 

But simply listen, take a book and write, 

Nor set down other than the given word, 

With nothing left to my arbitrament 

To choose or change : I wrote, and men believed.^ 



The Apocalyptic Warrant. Like its prototype the Book 
of Daniel, the Revelation of John comes from a time of 
fierce persecution ; and one object of it doubtless was to 
stay and comfort the oppressed church with a sure convic- 
tion of hope and triumph. But this is far from giving its 
whole or its main purpose. Its warrant lay in the bosom 
of the church itself, which was filled with tendencies that 
needed to be corrected and clarified. 

In the general expectation of Christ's coming, or parousia, 
there were many elements yet unexplained and in danger of 
FromPres- -atrophy through unbelief. The Second Epistle 
ent Perils of Peter, written under conditions similar to 
those of the Revelation, mentions the godless mockers of 
the time as saying, '' Where is the promise of his coming } 

1 Browning, "A Death in the Desert," 11. 135-144. 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

for, from the day that the fathers fell asleep, all things con- 
tinue as they were from the beginning of the creation " 
(2 Pet. iii, 4). This would seem to point to a widespread 
prevalence of the sentiment that Christianity was not the 
radical regenerative power it was meant to be ; in modern 
terms, was not '' making good." This sentiment would nat- 
urally be made much of by the foes and critics of the new 
life, who could judge it only from without. But also within 
the Christian community were dangers of much the same 
kind, which threatened the purity and even the existence 
of the distinctive Christian life. Such dangers had been 
warned against in the letters to Timothy (i Tim. i, 20 ; 
2 Tim. ii, 17, 18); and men had been singled out by name 
whose word, as was said, would "eat as doth a gangrene." 
The First Epistle of John, as we have noted, ^ was largely 
concerned to oppose two such perils (essentially rather than 
by name) : that of the Nicolaitans, who used their Christian 
profession as a cloak for licentiousness ; and that of Cerinthus, 
whom, because he denied that the Christ of the flesh could 
be divine, the epistle brands as antichrist. 

The general tendency of these corrupting influences 
seems to have been twofold : to undifferentiate the Christian 
character, merging it in the sensuality and immorality of the 
world ; and to make men dead to the value, and even the 
belief, of Christ's parousia. The presence of these evil ten- 
dencies is apparent in the messages to the Seven Churches 
which John prefixes to his Revelation (chapters ii and iii) ; 
some of which he warns against Nicolaitan and similar 
infections (for example, Pergamum, ii, 15 and cf. Ephesus, 
vs. 6 ; Thyatira, ii, 20), and others he rebukes for being spirit- 
ually dead or lukewarm (Sardis, iii, i ; Ephesus, ii-, 4 ; Laodi- 
cea, iii, 15). To men of such tendency the sharp persecution 
which called forth the Apocalypse would be less a calamity 
than a providence, testing the real fiber of their' Christian 

1 See above, p. 653. 
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THE RESURGENCE OF PROPHECY 

allegiance ; and a prophecy which would concentrate their 
life anew on the supreme issues of Christ's coming would 
be fully warranted by prevailing conditions. Such a prophecy 
was the Revelation of John. 

But there was more in the function of such a prophecy 
than to be a prophylactic against encroaching evils ; so much 
From inher- more that this is only incidental. In the literature 
ited Ideas of prophecy which the Christians had inherited 
from Old Testament times there was still a vast amount yet 
unfilled and unidentified. Its glowing oracles, its symbols, 
its realistic portrayals of a new order of things, were largely 
inert and unvalued, like so much useless lumber ; and this 
state of things was aggravated by the general apathy that 
was invading the church. Something had been done by such 
works as the Epistle to the Hebrews to apply the prophetic 
values of the old regime ; but much remained to be done. 
A new prophecy was needed to validate the old. 

Especially was this true of the most sweeping and com- 
prehensive prophecy of all : the Second Isaiah's prophecy of 
new heavens and a new earth (Isa. Ixv, 17-25 ; Ixvi, 22, 23). 
The time was passing and wickedness was increasing, with 
less and less likelihood of its fulfillment. The author of 
Second Peter, whom we may regard as a kind of under- 
study of the Johannine epistles, felt acutely the reproaches 
which such unfulfilled promises were eliciting. He reiterates 
the primitive Christian conviction that Christ's parousia will 
be accompanied by fiery destruction and judgment (2 Pet. 
iii, 7). He explains its delay by the idea that '' one day is 
with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years are 
as one day " (2 Pet. iii, 8). But as the upshot of it all, deny- 
ing slackness on the part of the Lord, he plants his faith on 
Isaiah's crowning prophecy: ''But, according to his promise, 
we look for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth 
righteousness" (2 Pet. iii, 13). All the vicissitudes of his- 
tory and nature "are but preliminary to this. And this, as the 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

final and crowning prophecy of the Apocalypse, the calm 
consummation after all its visualized turmoils and storms, 
evinces the abundant warrant for its existence. It is not 
only a prophecy in itself ; it is a summary and concentration 
of prophecy, as this has accumulated through ages of history 
and literature. 

II 

Its Symbolism, Inherited and Initiated. The Book of 
Revelation takes us over into the prophetic realm, which of 
itself requires an educated and spiritualized sense to realize ; 
and withal it is prophecy of a specific kind, namely, pro- 
phetic vision. It aims to portray the ultimate meanings of 
Biblical evolution in terms of the visible and audible. 

A vision, to be made intelligible to others, must be visual- 
ized, that is, put into terms of sense perception ; for it is by 
the organs of sense that men in the flesh communicate with 
one another. But beyond the sensible image there is an inner 
meaning, which can be apprehended only as the vision 
awakens in the one to whom it is told a spiritual state simi- 
lar to that of the teller. If the hearer has no such suscepti- 
bility to receive, the vision is to him only a grotesque and a 
monstrosity ; it is like trying to appreciate music without a 
musical ear, or color when one is color-blind. In other 
words, the visual image is a symbol. It directs the mind 
inward to a spiritual truth or principle so analogous to the 
material phenomenon that in those who have the proper 
susceptibility the one elicits the other. 

A prophetic vision is thus like Jesus' parables on a larger 
scale. He spoke these to the ''outsiders," as he said, in 
order that they might see and yet not see (cf. Mark iv, 
II, 12).^ To unlock their meaning men must have the fit- 
ting spiritual combination ; or, as he expressed it, '' He that 
hath ears to hear, let him hear" (Matt, xi, 15 ; xiii, 9, 16). 

1 See above, p. 549. 
[668] 



THE RESURGENCE OF PROPHECY 

In the same manner, of all the messages to the seven 
churches in Asia the author of the Revelation says, "He 
who hath an ear let him hear what the Spirit saith to the 
churches" (Rev. ii, 7, 11, 17, 29; iii, 6, 13, 22) ; and of a 
particularly enigmatic oracle he says, '' Let him who hath 
understanding count the number of the beast ; for it is the 
number of a man" (Rev. xiii, 18) ; just as of a mysterious 
reference to Daniel in his prophetic discourse Jesus said, 
'' Let him that readeth understand " (Mark xiii, 14). The 
symbolism, like the ancient mysteries, is for the initiated. 

The symbolic visions of Revelation, however, are by no 
means run-wild or arbitrary. They have their roots in the 
literature and traditions which from time immemorial have 
been the education of Jews and Christians ; who are already 
at home in its conceptions and vocabulary. Their design, 
indeed, is not to propound a mystery but to clear it up : the 
mystery which, as St. Paul says, " hath been hid for ages 
and generations : but now is made manifest to his saints, . . . 
which is Christ in you, the hope of glory " (Col. i, 26, 27). 
To the sharing of such visions there is no arbitrary bar. 
It requires only what is promised to all Christians : the 
endowment of the Spirit and consciousness of Christ. 

When at the outset of his disclosure John writes, "After 
these things I saw, and behold, a door opened in heaven " 
Figurative (Rev. iv, i), we have no warrant for deeming 
and Literal |-}^jg g^ literal view into the arcana of the universe, 
as it were into sensible phenomena. To interpret it so vul- 
garizes it into a peep show, on a level with alleged psychic 
disclosures, and raises interminable difficulties, from which 
the too literal-minded and materialized church has suffered 
much. Besides, the whole tenor of scripture thought is 
against it. In remarkable contrast to the speculations of 
other religions, the Scripture prophets and apostles are reti- 
cent about the literal aspects of the unseen and the here- 
after. St. Paul relates (2 Cor. xii, 2-4) that he once knew 

, ' [669] 



GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

a man who was caught up to the third heaven ; but no descrip- 
tion is attempted of what he saw, and what he heard was 
*' unspeakable words which it is not lawful for a man to 
utter " ; he was uncertain, indeed, whether the man who 
saw and heard (he means of course himself) was in the body 
or out of it. This well represents the sane and reverent 
attitude of the Christian mind toward another state of being. 
Its quickened spiritual sense represses a vulgar curiosity. 

Note. The Finer View. Tennyson, in " In Memoriam," xxxi-xxxiii, 
notes this reticence in the case of Lazarus, and the lack of curiosity on 
the part of Mary, with their effects on religious faith. Of her postulated 
question to Lazarus, 

" Where wert thou, brother, those four days .-' " 
(cf. John xi. 39) the poet remarks. 

There lives no record of reply 

Which telling what it is to die 
Had surely added praise to praise . . . 
Behold a man raised up by Christ ! 

The rest remaineth unreveal'd ; 

He told it not, or something seal'd 
The lips of that Evangelist. 

The same reticence is shown with regard to the Supreme 
Being. The circumstances of the vision may require that 
He be identified, as is the case in the visions of Isaiah, 
Ezekiel, and the Apocalyptist ; but Isaiah sees only His 
•skirts filling the Temple (Isa. vi, i) ; Ezekiel describes only 
a mystic hitman form in terms of fire and color (Ezek. i, 
26, 27) ; and John, when he first mentions the occupant 
of the "great white throne," describes Him merely as re- 
sembling precious stones (Rev. iv, 3), and later as One 
"from whose face the earth and the heavens fled away" 
(Rev. XX, II). Evidently it is not intended that the pic- 
tured scenery and activities of the unseen state of being 
should be taken literally. 

But this does not imply that these things are unreal. 
They deal rather with the inner truth of things than with 

[670] 



THE RESURGENCE OF PROPHECY 

their visualized appearance. The fact that they are described 
in symbol is a virtual confession that they are so crowded 
with spiritual meanings that no one sensible object and no 
single figure can e'xpress them. Take as illustration one of 
the simplest, the first description of the Son of Man in 
glory (Rev. i, 13-16). The form, in its splendor of light 
and flame, is not greatly unlike what the three disciples 
saw on the Mount of Transfiguration (cf. Mark ix, 3). But 
when there are added stars in his hand, and a sword com- 
ing from his mouth (cf. Isa. xi, 4 ; xlix, 2), we must have 
recourse to symbol to preserve its verisimilitude. The same 
may be said of the Lion of the tribe of Judah, identical 
with the Lamb '' as it had been slain," who prevailed to open 
the seals of the book (Rev. v, 5, 6). As symbol it is sub- 
lime and luminously significant ; and only so. To go on with 
other familiar symbols, like the great white throne, the city 
four-square, the streets of gold, the gates of pearl, the river 
of the water of life, the book of life, is to reach the same 
result. Not only do we know what they mean, but they 
raise in our minds a sense of sublimity, purity, and per- 
fection of being, such as no literal words could express, 
and perhaps no other figures. To deem the book unreal 
because it is symbolical is but to confess one's own spiritual 
density and limitation. 

It is important to keep in mind that this Book of Revelation 
stands at the end, the culminating point, of the Bible. A world- 
Symbol and long history has preceded it, and a coordinated 
History literature many centuries in the making — history 

and literature charged throughout with prophetic values. It 
leaves us with a new chapter of history opened, in which 
the same spiritual forces here revealed are going on to new 
conquests and triumphs until the last great battle is fought 
and the Christ is fully come. Generations and ages are yet 
to inscribe thdr names and deeds in a new Book of Life 
(cf. Rev. XX, 12) ; for the end of the Bible is not conceived 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

as an end but as a beginning. That an author like John 
should thus take his stand between the old and the new, at 
once summarizing and forecasting such a vast world move- 
ment, nothing less or other than a most ihtrepid symbolism, 
like a crowded yet creative stenography, could suffice. His 
ideas must be projected on an immense scale ; must cover 
a limitless range ; must withal have the unity and consistency 
of one work of literary art. It is a stupendous undertaking. 

Accordingly, he writes as an heir of the literary ages 
before him. The Revelation of John may be regarded as 
a clearing house of the symbolic language which has been 
used to convoy the history of God's work and purpose 
hitherto. Several of the old prophets, notably Ezekiel, 
Zechariah, and Daniel, have employed the idiom freely ; 
not to speak of the numerous apocalyptic touches scattered 
through all the Old Testament prophecy and poetry. The 
Book of Isaiah, as we have seen, resolves itself into a " vision" 
(Isa. i, I) of a whole prophetic era, beginning with a people 
on the verge of doom and ending with the promise of 
new heavens and a new earth. There is this to be noted, 
however, of the Old Testament symbolism : it is nearer to 
the literal, it works itself out in terms of historic forces 
and redeeming personalities here on this earth. It belongs 
rather to the era of prophecy than of fulfillment, to a state 
of things confessedly unfinal. And so, along with its reli- 
gious values may be read the practical values of statesman- 
ship, social righteousness, and law ; with all of which the 
symbolism is vitally involved. 

All these survive and find their place in this clearing 
house of symbolic values. Many of John's images are 
modeled on imagery already made familiar in prophetic 
history. The four living creatures, the dragon, the mon- 
strous beast, the enslaving harlot, the field of Armageddon, 
Gog and Magog, reappear and have their ordained function 
in this summarizing book. But not only are these inherited 

[672] 



THE RESURGENCE OF PROPHECY 

symbols endowed ' with a larger and broader meaning. To 
them the author adds also a rich store of new symbolism 
suited to the new field of prophecy here opening. P'or he is 
concerned with the principles and events of unseen and eter- 
nal realms ; his history moves in both earth and heaven ; and 
to it not human powers and personalities alone are adequate, 
but only the divine-human power and personality of Jesus 
Christ. In him all centers and culminates, not in any lower 
agency or dignity however celestial. When the conflicts are 
over and the redeemed raise their song of salvation, John 
is moved to worship the angel who has commissioned him 
to write. ''And I fell at his feet to worship him. And he 
saith unto me, ' See thou do it not ; I am a fellow-servant 
with thee and with thy brethren that hold the testimony 
of Jesus; worship God; for the testimony of Jesus is the 
spirit of prophecy' " (Rev. xix, lo). 

Ill 

The Reality within the Symbol. One consequence of 
the enigmatic character of the Revelation is that no other 
book of the Bible has so provoked speculation as to the 
literal reality underlying its daring symbolism. What, in 
identifiable terms, were the things which John said " must 
shortly come to pass " ? The book has been the feeding 
ground of countless inquiries and conjectures, many of them 
deeply erudite and ingenious, all more or less futile. Their 
fallacy lies in their own cultural or personal equation. Either 
they seek to imprison its meanings in the particular genera- 
tion for which the prophet wrote or else some later histori- 
cal condition bulks so large in their interpretative system 
that the prophecy, however remote its composition, seems 
to have been made especially for it. The former view 
cramps and specializes the book too narrowly to its own 
age. The latter lays it open to wild theories, putting it at 
the mercy of speculative cranks. Against both St. Peter's 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

judicious words about the uses of prophecy may be cited : 
"We have also," he says, "a surer word of prophecy; 
whereto ye do well to take heed, as to a lamp which shineth 
in a dark place, until the day dawn, and the day-star arise 
in your hearts ; knowing this first, that no prophecy of the 
scripture may be privately interpreted. For prophecy came 
not at any time by the will of man ; but men, being moved by 
the Holy Spirit, spoke from God " ^ (2 Pet. i, 19-21). This 
seems clearly to indicate the large scale and scope of prophecy. 
It is not confinable to one man's or one generation's range 
of vision or to any particular crisis of affairs. The fact that 
God is speaking through men makes its meanings vital as 
broadly as His Spirit works. And this range is illimitable.. 

It is in the epistles to the Seven Churches (Rev. ii, iii), 
which are prefixed to the distinctively apocalyptic body of 
The immedi- the book, that we get nearest to the reality within 
ate Purview ^\^q symbol.'^ In that section the writer, in the 
pastoral feeling, avails himself of the prevailing letter form, 
though with rather elaborate literary treatment ; and in giving 
to each church counsel accurately adapted to its situation 
and needs conveys as a whole '' an epitome of the Uni- 
versal Church and of the whole range of human life." The 
churches in question, which are hardly separated in thought 
from the cities themselves, have each their special perils 
from corrupting influences within and from their environ- 
ment in the world ; and it is predicted that some of them 
must pass through sharp trials (see, for example, ii, 10), in 
which their patience and fidelity will be tested. What these 
trials are, however, appears only vaguely. 

The real situation underlying the elaborate symbolism of 
the book and its immediate occasion appears more definitely 
in the apocalypse itself, though at this distance of time it 
is not easily identifiable in its details, as it could be by 

1 Translation of " The Corrected English New Testament." 

2 See Ramsay, " The Letters to the Seven Churches," Chapter IV. 

[674] 



THE RESURGENCE OF PROPHECY 

contemporaries who were wise to interpret the signs of the 
times. It was a period of persecution — when the Roman 
Empire, in the person of some of its infamous emperors, 
was stirred against the Christians and sought to extirpate 
them or force them to heathenism. Such hostihties were 
begun by Nero a.d. 64, in a pohcy of persecution which 
remained in force with greater or less severity through the 
century, attaining its greatest fierceness under Nero himself 
in the few years succeeding 64 and under Domitian in the 
last decade of the century.^ The legislated deification of 
the Roman emperors, which characterized this period and 
which filled the provinces with the temples, customs, and 
coinage of this blasphemous cult, would of itself make 
the lot of the Christians a hard one. St. John, their most 
conspicuous leader in Asia Minor, wrote the book as a 
persecuted exile in the island of Patmos (Rev. i, 9), but 
whether he has in mind the trials under Nero or under 
Domitian is uncertain. The generally strained and perilous 
situation for Christendom and the call for patience, watch- 
fulness, and courage, the virtues inculcated in the presage 
of Jesus' words, were the same in either case. 

The writer's immediate purview, however, touches only 
one point of the immense reality which forms the subject 
The Cuimi- of his prophecy. His real theme is the ultimate 
nating Event triumph of the Messianic kingdom of God, which 
had ^been dimly foreshadowed by Daniel and the Jewish 
Apocalyptists, and which had been evolving since the 
foundation of the world (cf. i Pet. i, 19, 20 ; Matt, xxv, 34). 
In countless symbolic references and allusions drawn from 
the vast store of heathen, Jewish, and Christian imager}', the 
mighty conflict is depicted, as in a world-epic, and con- 
centrated in a tremendous battle of world-forces, typified on 
the one side by the Roman Empire and on the other by the 
Church of Christ. This was the reality, as expressed in 

^ See Swete, " The Apocalypse of John," pp. Ixxxi-xc. 

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GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 

terms of history : a battle of spiritual forces which later 
ages have proved and are still proving to have been 
accurately prophesied. 

''Two Empires," says Bishop Westcott,i ''two social 
organizations, designed to embrace the whole world, started 
together in the first century. ... In principle, in mode of 
action, in sanctions, in scope, in history they offer an abso- 
lute contrast. . . , The history of the Roman Empire is from 
the first the history of a decline and fall . . . the history 
of the Christian Empire is from the first the history of a 
victorious' progress." The informing spirit of the first is 
like that of a monstrous beast, set on and inspired by Satan 
the arch-enemy of mankind, " the dragon, the old serpent " 
(Rev. XX, 2 ; cf. Gen. iii, i ; Isa. li, 9 A.V.), whose powers 
emanate from the pit of all corruption and foulness. The 
informing spirit of the second is like that of a Lamb, "as 
it had been slain " (Rev. v, 6), who at the throne of God 
"prevailed" to open the seven-sealed book of destiny, and 
who as " the root and the offspring of David " works out 
to salvation and redemption the eternal purpose of God 
(Rev. xxii, 16). Agencies of contrasted nature, demoniac 
and angelic, employing natural forces and human energies, 
carry on the conflict in unseen regions ; while with every 
new onset the saints are exhorted to steadfastness and 
courage, and the celestial hosts raise songs of joy. So the 
mighty campaign goes on. 

The culmination of it all is typified in two cities, standing 
respectively for the worldly and the spiritual capitals of the 
earth : the licentious and despotic city named Babylon but 
unmistakably identified as Rome (Rev. xvii, 9, 18), over 
whose downfall a song like the old-time taunt songs is 
raised ^ (Rev. xviii, 2-20 ; cf . Isa. xiv, 4-20) ; and the holy 

1 " Epistles of St. John," p. 253. Quoted here from Swete, "The 
Apocalypse of St. John," p. Ixxxi. 

^ For the taunt song, as a species of mashal, see above, p. 69. 

[676] 



THE RESURGENCE OF PROPHECY 

city New Jerusalem, which is beheld " coming down out of 
heaven from God, made ready as a bride adorned for her 
husband" (Rev. xxi, 2; cf. Isa. Ixii, 1-5 ; Ixv, 18, 19). 

Thus as a purified municipality, a perfected social organiza- 
tion, from which all that defiles and disintegrates is banished, 
this culminating vision of God's great purpose leaves us. It 
is the summary of an epic portrayal which, with all its wealth 
of symbolic imagery, is beyond expression sublime. And it 
lays hold on the deepest elements of human and divine 
nature, the elements which, walking in the light, as He is 
in the light, have fellowship one with another. For the 
perfected city, the ''Jerusalem which is above, is free, 
which is the mother of us all." ^ 

iGal. iv, 26 (A.V.). 



VETERI • TESTAMENTO • NOVVM • LATET 
NOVO TESTAMENTO • VETUS • PATET • 



[677] 



INDEX 



[Titles of main divisions, chapters, and books of Scripture are in small capitals. 
For these, as also for sections of considerable scope, the page references denote 
their extent. The multitude of details within these sections must, for the most part, 
be confined to such as would naturally be looked for alphabetically ; for the rest, 
except for some topics made important by this treatment, recourse may be had to 
the numerous sideheadings.] 



Abraham, as embodiment of racial 
faith, 31 

Absoluteness of Jesus' words, 547 

Acts of the Apostles, 604-607 . 

After the Reprieve (Chap. V), 
186-247 

Amos, Book of, 148-152 

Apocalypse of John (= Revela- 
tion of John), 664-677 

Apocalyptic elements in Old Testa- 
ment prophets, 147, 527,667; fore- 
gleams and reckonings in Daniel, 
512 ; idea of the new order, 528 ; 
elements inherited in New Testa- 
ment, 656, 667 ; warrant in the 
Revelation of John^ 665-668 

Apostles, the, their message, 583 ; 
their fitting work, 585 ; Apostles, 
Acts of the, 604-607 

Apostolic college, the, 584 

Appendix, to Hebrew canon (Chron- 
icles), 517 ; to Jeremiah in modern 
versions (Lamentations), 494 

Aptitude, dominant Hebrew and 
Greek, compared, 37 

Aramaic, relation to Hebrew, 30 ; 
section of, in Daniel, 282 

Assyrian crisis met and weathered 
in Isaiah's time, 179-185 

Awaking of the Literary Sense 
(Chap. II), 77-96 



Balaam, oracles of, 1 21-123 

Baptism by John, as symbolic act, 
532 ; of Jesus, as human acqui- 
escence, 537 

Beloved Disciple, legacy of the, 
641-654 

Bethany, miracle at, and its mean- 
ing, 574 

Bible, what 's in the name, 3 ; as 
a literature, 4-12; as a library 
(canon), J2-2I ; as a book, 21-24; 
as common to Jews and Jesus, 523 

Biblical movement, rationale of the, 
22 

Birthday of Judaism, 381 

Book, The People of a (Book II), 
249-520 ; found in the Temple, 
220-228 

Burden (= oracle), 191, note 

Canon, meaning of the term, 13; 
Old Testament, original order of 
the, 19 ; order as varied in mod- 
ern versions, 519 

Canticles. See Song of Songs 

Captivity, Chaldean, its motive and 
stages, 254-256 

Centuries, The Formative (Book 
I), 25-247 

Chaldean captivity, its motive and 
stages, 254-256 



[679] 



guidebook! to biblical literature 



Christ, term equivalent to Messiah, 
528 ; problem, the, and its solu- 
tion, 535, 536 ; idea, initiating the, 

537-543 
Chronicles, Books of, 404-410; 

as resume of Judaism, 516 
Classic, what, 426 
Classics, the three great, 432-482 ; 

the five little (Megilloth), 482-510 
Collection of the Biblical literary 

works, movement for, 16 
CoLossiANs, Epistle to the, 630 
Coming of Christ, idea of, 528 f., 

590 

Confession, the great (Peter's), 567 

Continuity of Isaiah First and Sec- 
ond, 304-307 

Corinthians, Epistles to the, 
624, 625 

Covenant, mutual relation by, 53- 
55 ; new, prophesied by Jeremiah, 
240 f. 

Culminating event in the Revelation 
of John, 675 

Cultus literature, the later, 403-416 

Cyrus, as liberator and civilizer, 310 

Daniel, Book of, 278-300 ;' lit- 
erary vehicle and stimulus, 515; 
apocalyptic foregleams and reck- 
onings in, 512-516 
Daughter of Zion in prophecy, 305 
David, his elegy over Saul and Jon- 
athan, 60 ; his lament over Abner, 
60 ; his last words, 436 ; his part 
in the literary awakening, 81 
Davidic destiny in Israel, 324; key- 
note in Psalms, 441-444 
Day of Jehovah, meaning of, 208 
Dearth of learning in Jerusalem, 372 
Deborah, Song of, 40 ; as starting 

point, 5 
Deliverance, keynote of Israel's 

history, 50 
Departure, Jesus', reckoning on, 
571-576 

[68 



Deutero-Isaiah. See Second Isaiah 
Deuteronomy, Book of (as found 

in the Temple), 222-228 
Dies Irae, prophets of the, 208-219 
Disciple whom Jesus loved, gospel 

source conjectured as John, 596 ; 

otherwise, 641-651 
Divine character, Jesus' utterances 

in, 558-562 ; Jesus' acts in, 562- 

565 

ECCLESIASTES, BoOK OF, 497-505 

Editorial movement in Bible com- 
pilation, 17, 374 
Edom, prophets against, 215, note 
Elegy, the, as verse form, 67 ; 
David's, over Saul and Jonathan 
and over Abner, 60 
Elohim, as name of Deity, 48 
Elohistic source (E) of early history, 

112 
El Shaddai, primitive name of Deity, 

48 
Emotion, intensity of, in Second 

Isaiah, and cause, 308 
End of the era, Jesus* words con- 
cerning the, 659-665 
EpHESiANS, Epistle to the, 630 
Episodes in the gospels, 596 
Epistle form, the, and its uses, 613- 

615 
Epistles, of St. Paul {see Letters) ; 
from Jesus' personal circle, 638- 
640 
Esther, Book of, 505-510 
Event, culminating, in Revelation, 

675 
Exile, Literary Fruits of the 

(Chap. VI), 254-369 

Exodus to Deuteronomy outlined, 

397 
Expectation of new order in Jesus' 

time, 527 
Ezekiel, Book of, 257-278 
Ezra, scribe and scholar, 379-384; 

Book of, 410-412 



INDEX 



Fact, The Literature of (Chap. 
X), 582-607 

Falsity, human, Jesus' encounters 
with, 554-558 

Folk tale, the, as primitive form, 70 

Form, Hebrew poetic, 65 

Formative Centuries, The (Book 
I), 25-247; general outline of, 27 

Fragments and remainders, literary, 
58-64 

Frontier, literary, of Old Testa- 
ment, 510 

Fulfillment, of prophecy, as typical 
of New Testament, 22; recog- 
nized, 589; of types (Hebrews), 634 

Galatians, Epistle to the, 625 
Genesis, Book of, in Biblical story, 

395-397 
Germinating time of gospel growth, 

592 
God Who Is, the, as self-named, 47 
Good tidings {cf. Gospel), 309 
Gospel, meaning of term, 583 ; the 

fourth (story told once more), 

645-651 
Gospels, synoptic, growth of the, 

591-604; as completed, 598-603 
Great confession, the (Peter's), 567; 

living up to the, 569 
Greek, language of New Testament, 

29 ; version (LXX), effect of, on 

Old Testament canon, 519 

Habakkuk, Book of, 217-219 

Haggai, Book of, 341-344 

Hebrew, meaning of name, 31 ; lan- 
guage in Old Testament, 29 ; 
Classics, Treasury of the 
Choice (Chap. VIII), 426-520 

Hebrews, Epistle to the, 634-636 

Herald, the prophetic (John), 530 

Hexateuch, 391, note 

Hezekiah, as royal patron of litera- 
ture, 194-196; men of, and their 
proverbs, 202 

[68 



Historic fiber of the Bible, 5 
Historical writing, beginnings of, 
104-119; composition, order of, 
104; situation for prophetic move- 
ment, 135-137 ; evolution traced 
after exile, 376 
History, Hebrew genius for, 39 ; as 
edited in exile, 378 ; as charged 
with prophecy, 425; as back- 
ground of John's Revelation, 673 
HosEA, Book of, 152-156 
Human genius and initiative in Bib- 
lical literature, 428 

Ideas, inherited fund of, in Israel, 
46-56 ; of new order met by 
Jesus, 528-530 

Imagination quickened by apoca- 
lyptic writings, 657 

Isaiah of Jerusalem, Book of 
(Isa. i-xxxix), 167-179; First and 
Second, continuity of, 304-307 ; 
why discriminated, 302 ; Second, 
Book of (Isa. xl-lxvi), 300-337 ; 
mood of expression, 308 

Isaiah's vision of destiny, 189-194 

Israel, kingdom of, 100 ; literary 
situation in, 103 

Jacob-Israel, as embodiment of racial 
character, 33 

James, Epistle of, 636-638 

Jashar, quoted book of, 59 

Jehovah (= Yahveh), meaning of 
name, 48 

Jehovistic source (J) of early his- 
tory, no f. 

Jeremiah, Book of, 228-247 

Jesus, as center of New Testament, 
526 ; initiating the Christ-idea, 537- 
543; his ministry, literary element 
in, 543-544 ; his general public 
utterances, 544-548 ; his teaching 
in parables, 548-554; his encoun- 
ters with human falsity, 554-558 ; 
his utterances in divine character, 



GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 



558-562 ; his acts in divine char- 
acter, 562-565 ; bearing witness 
to the truth, 565-581 

Jewish mind and mood, the, 385 ; 
ideas transformed to Christian 
values, 625, 633 

Job, Book of, 463-482 ; as corre- 
late with Proverbs and Ecclesi- 
astes, 503 f. 

Joel, Book of, 143-147 

John the Baptist, his ministry, 530- 
534 ; a prophet and more, 658 

John, son of Zebedee, as putative 
source of fourth gospel, 596, 642 ; 
Gospel of (the story told once 
more), 645-651 ; First Epistle 
of (the " postscript commenda- 
tory"), 651-654; other EPISTLES 
OF, 654; Revelation of, 664- 
667 ; culminating event in, 67 5 

Jonah, Book of, 418-423 

Joshua's apostrophe to sun and 
moon, 59 

Josiah, King, and the book of the 
law, 221; reign and death of, 206 f. 

Judah, kingdom of, loi ; literary 
situation in, 103 

Judaism, birthday of, 381 

JuDE, Epistle of, 640 

Kingdom of heaven, prevalent ideas 

of, 528, 551 ; secret of, in Jesus' 

parables, 551-553 
Kingdoms^ the two, one people in, 

98-104; literary situation in, 102 f. 
Kings of Judah after Hezekiah, 

205 
KHhubim (writings), Hebrew title 

of third division of canon, 426 

Lamech, song of, 65 
Lamentations, Book of, 494-496 
Land of the Bible, its significance, 

8 ; as allotted to Israel, 42 
Language of the Bible, 29 
Law, Mosaic, stages of, 398 

[68 



Law-ordered history as edited in 
exile, 378 

Lazarus, raising of, 574 ; suggested 
relation to fourth gospel, 644 

Legalism and its austerities, 385- 
414; atmosphere of, 387' 

Legend, the semi-historic, in early 
history, 118 f.; in Daniel, 282 f. 

Letters of St. Paul, 623-633 ; of the 
active missionary (first period), 
623-628 ; of the Roman prisoner 
(second period), 62^8-633 

Library (= canon), the Bible as a, 
12-21 

Literary Fruits of the Exile 
(Chap. VI), 254-369 ; Sense, 
Awaking of the (Chap. II), 
77-96; element in Jesus' ministry, 
543-565; frontier, on the, 510; 
gifts of New Testament writers, 
61 1 ; prophecy, beginnings of, 
119-122 ; quality in general, 10 

Literature of Fact, The (Chap. 
X), 582-607 ; OF Values, The 
(Chap. XI), 608-654 

Logia, source-gospels and, 594 

Logos, literary significance of, 526, 
note 

Looking Before and After 
(Chap. Ill), 97-132 

Luke, Gospel of, as completed, 
602 f.; as author of the gospel and 
Acts, 602, 604 ; as companion of 
St. Paul, 606 

Lyric strain, the, general and sacred, 
87-92 ; poetry, David's relation 
to, 81-83; artistry in Spng of 
Songs, 486 ff. 

Malachi, Book of, 362-369 
Manasseh, King, his reign and char- 
acter, 205 
Manifesto at Nazareth, Jesus', 540 
Mark, as primitive gospel source, 
597 ; Gospel of, as completed, 
598-600 

2] 



INDEX 



Mashal, the, as a literary form, 68, 
95 ; (proverb), art and aim of, 452 ; 
working itself free, 455-461 

Matthew, as personal gospel 
source, 596; Gospel of, as com- 
pleted, 600-601 

Maturity of Christian thought in 
St. Paul's epistles, 630-633 

Megilloth, the five, 482-510 

Messenger, the, and his function, 

367, 530 

Messiah, meaning of name, 528 

MiCAH, Book of, 160-167 

Midrash^ Hebrew term for exposi- 
tory literature, 407, 419; in New 
Testament times, '523 

Ministry, Jesus', literary element in, 
543-565 ; of familiar friendship, 
539 f.; later days of, 565 ff.; round- 
ing off earthly, 577-581 

Miracles of Jesus (acts in divine 
character), 562-565 

Miriam's song" at the Red Sea, 51 

Musical and literary disposal of 
Psalms, 444-447 

Mutual relation by covenant, 53-56 

Mystery, adopted Christian term, 633 

Myth, the prehistoric, 115 

Myth and legend, treatment of, 114- 
119 

Nahum, Book of, 212-214 
Narration, Hebrew genius for, 71 
Nehemiah, Book of, 413, 414 
New Testament, relation of, to Old, 

23 
Northern kingdom (Israel), the, 100 ; 
prophecy in, 147 



Obadiah, Book of, 214-216 
Older literature, treasures from the, 

under Hezekiah, 196-204 
Oracle (= burden), 191, note 
Oracles, tribal and racial, 120 ; 

anonymous, appended to Zecha- 

riah, 353-362 

[683] 



Oral beginnings of literature, 56 ; 
standard of narration, 71; origin 
of gospels, 583 

Order of Old Testament, as histori- 
cal and as literary, 20 

Parable, as form of the mashal, 68, 70 
Parables, Jesus' teaching in, 548-554 
Paradox in Jesus' words, 546 
Parallelism, Hebrew verse unit, 65 
Parousia of Christ, as Christian 

belief, 590 
Paul, St. See St. Paul 
Pause of the prophetic movement, 
370 ; between the Testaments, 
517-520 
Pentateuch, as continuous story, 
108 ; the completed and pub- 
lished, 391-402 ; question, the, 392 
Pentecost and its event, 588 f. 
People of a Book (Book II), 249- 
520 ; OF the Way (Book III), 
521-677 
Personal relation with Deity as 
basis of Hebrew religion and lit- 
erature, 54; ascendancy in early 
literature, 73 ; values in third sec- 
tion of canon, 429 ; sources of 
gospels, 595-597 ; emotions in 
epistles, 614 
Peter, as personal gospel source, 
595 ; First Epistle of, 638 ; 
Second Epistle of, 639 
Philemon, Epistle to, 630 
Philippians, Epistle to the, 630 
Pleroma (fullness), adopted Chris- 
tian term, 632 
Post-exilic men of letters, 373 
Postponement of doom for Judah, 

157-159 
Preliminary Survey, A, 3-24 

Pre-literary times, avails and deficits, 

72-76 
Pre-Mosaic story, 394-397 
Presage of end in Jesus' words, 

660-664 



GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 



Priestly source of early history (P), 

"3 
Prophecy, nature of, 39, note ; 

literary beginnings of, 1 19-123; 
THE Stress of (Chap. IV), 133- 
185; subsidence of, 352-369; as 
edited after the exile, 375 f-; his- 
tory charged with, 425 ; Resur- 
gence OF, The (Chap. XII), 

655-677 

Prophetic genius in Hebrew mind, 
38; order, evolution of the, 123- 
129; gifts, grades of, 125-127; 
masters and guilds, 1 29-1 31 ; style 
and response to occasion, 138-143 

Prophet's specific function, the, 
127-129 

Prophets, sons of the, 131 

Proverb, the, art and aim of, 452 

Proverbs, compihng of, under 
Hezekiah, 202 ; successive de- 
posits of, 453 ; Book of, 85, 448- 
463 ; as correlate with Job and 
Ecclesiastes, 503 

Psalms, as identified with David, 
82, 89 ; with historical headings, 
90 ; collecting of, under Heze- 
kiah, 197 ; The Five Books of, 
432-447 ; distribution of, 438 ; 

. Davidic keynote and leading idea 
of, 441-444; musical and literary 
disposal of, 444-447 

Puritan Era, The, and its Lit- 
erature (Chap. VII), 370-425; 
Puritan spirit in outbreak, 380 ; 
reactions against and alleviations 
of, 414-425 

Q source of gospels, 597 

Racial genius of the Hebrews, 31 ; 
sentiment in Esther, 506 f. 

Reactions against Puritan austerity, 
414-418 

Reality within symbol in the Revela- 
tion of John, 673 



Rebuilt temple, prophets of the, 

340-353 
Reestablishment, literature of, 337- 

369 
Refusal and resolve, Jesus', 571-574 
Religion, Semitic and Hebrew 

genius for, 35 f. 
Remnant, the (under Isaiah), 182, 

306 
Reprieve, After the (Chap. V), 

186-247 
Resurrection, the, as basis of gos- 
pel, 584, 588 
Revelation of John, The, 664- 

677 
Roman prisoner (St. Paul), letters 

of the, 628-633 
Romans, Epistle to the, 625 
Ruth, Book of, 417, 493- 

Sages, the, 92 

Saint Paul, as orator and letter 
writer, 615-633; the man, 616- 
619; the orator, 620-622; the 
letter writer, 623-633 ; letters of 
first period, 624-628 ; letters of 
second period, 629-633 

Satan, as the cynic spirit in Job, 
470 

Scholarship in Chaldea during exile, 

373 

Scribes and Pharisees, Jesus' en- 
counter with, 557 f. 

Second Isaiah, as finisher of the 
vision, 300-337 ; mood of expres- 
sion in, 308 ; relation of, to First 
Isaiah, 167, 301; continuity with 
First Isaiah, 304-307 

Selection, movement of, in Biblical 
literature, 18 

Self-consciousness, national, quick- 
ened in Solomon's time, 78 

Semina Litterarum (Chap. I), 
29-76 

Septuagint version, effect of, on 
the Hebrew canon, 431, 519 



[684] 



INDEX 



Sermon on the Mount, as a typical 
discourse of Jesus, 544 

Servant of Jehovah, as a communi- 
ty, 315; personal original of, 317- 
324 ; solidarity of meaning of, 
322 

Shams, Jesus' unearthing of, 557 

Shepherds as cultural leaders, 164, 
238, 272 f. 

Simplicity and plainness of Jesus' 
words, 546 

Solomon's relation to literature, 83- 
86 ; song {see Song of Songs) 

Son of Man, The (Chap. IX), 
526-581 ; adopted title of Jesus, 
541 f. ; Son of God, as Jesus' self- 
consciousness, 537 ; as revealed 
in utterances and acts in divine 
character, 558-565 

Song, the, as fundamental literary 
form, 66 ; of Songs, as typical 
of Solomon, 85, 88 ; of Songs, 
Book of, 485-492 

Sons of the prophets, 131 

Source stories of early literature, 
two main lines (J, E), 109-113; 
how supplemented (P), 113 f.; 
gospels and logia, 594-598 

Sources, personal, of gospels, 595- 
597 ; of epistles, 612 f. 

Southern kingdom (Judah), the, 
loi ; prophecy in, 157-185 

Spiritual illumination at Pentecost, 
588 f. 

Spoken and written literature dis- 
tinguished, 13-16 

Starting point in Biblical literature, 
5, note 

Stress of Prophecy, The (Chap. 

^ IV), 133-185 

Subsidence of prophecy, 352-369 

Symbol and history in the Revela- 
tion of John, 668, 671 

Synoptic gospels, growth of the, 
591-598 ; as completed, 598- 
604 



Teaching, the later, of Jesus, 578 f. 
Temple, the, significance of, in 

Israelitish state, 77 
Temptation of Jesus, 538 f. 
Thessalonians, Epistles to the, 

624, 
Threshing, symbolic use of, 312 
Thushiyah (intuition), term peculiar 

to Wisdom, 203, 461 f., 479 
Timothy, Epistles to, 630 
Title Son of Man, as adopted by 

Jesus, 541 f. ■• 

Titles of Psalms, 91, 444 
Titus, Epistle to, 630 
Transfiguration, the, 571-573 
Transformation of Jewish ideas in 

St. Paul's epistles, 625-628 
Treasury of the Choice Hebrew 

Classics (Chap. VIII), 426-520 
Trito- Isaiah, 327 
Truth, Jesus' witness to the, 565- 

581 
Twin prophets in Judah (Isaiah and 

Micah), 160 
Types, fulfillment of (Hebrews), 

634-636 

Values, The Literature of 
(Chap. XI), 608-654; main lines 
of, in New Testament literature, 
609-61 1 

Verse, Hebrew unit of, 65 

Vision, broadened sense of term, 
190 f.; of Isaiah (Second), 302- 
337 ; of Nahum, 212 ; of Obadiah, 
214 

Visions of Zechariah, 346-350 

Vocal setting of Song of Songs, 
490-492 

Wars of Jehovah, lost book of the, 

58 
Way, the Christian, its meaning, 

524 ; The People of the (Book 

III), 521-677 
Wilderness ordeal of Jesus, 538 



[685] 



GUIDEBOOK TO BIBLICAL LITERATURE 



Wisdom strain of literature, the, 
92-96; shaping of a book of, in 
Proverbs, 449 ; wave, crest of the, 
461-463; Job's encounter with, 
472-475; from above (James), 
636-638 
Witness to the truth, Jesus', 565- 

581 
Witnesses, call of Israel to be, 312 
Word, the, as applied to Christ, 526 
World mission of the Hebrews, 34 
Writings, name of the third section 
of the canon, 426 



Written literature compared with 
spoken, 1 5 ; records, primitive, 1 5 

Yahveh (= Jehovah), meaning of 

name, 48 
Yithron, wisdom term used by Ec- 

clesiastes, 499 

Zechariah, Book of, 344-352 ; 

anonymous oracles appended to, 

353-362 
Zephaniah, Book of, 209-212 
Zion, daughter of, in prophecy, 305 



[686] 



I 



